Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 10 (2013), pp 239–264.
doi:10.1017/S1479409813000256

r Cambridge University Press, 2013

Nineteenth-Century Gagaku Songs as a
Subject of Musical Analysis: An Early
Example of Musical Creativity inModern Japan
Hermann Gottschewski
Email: gottschewski@fusehime.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Nineteenth-century gagaku (Japanese traditional court music) songs, composed mainly
between 1877 and 1884, are almost forgotten today; but they deserve special attention for theirfunction in the development of modern composition in Japan. More than 100 compositions by
28 composers, belonging to two collections, can be counted as gagaku songs in the narrowest
sense. Most of them are accompanied by an individually composed ostinato pattern played on
the wagon, a six-stringed zither. The songs are strongly shaped by Restoration thought, one of
the characteristic aspects of the early modernization period in Japan, although the genre
originated in response to the need for music for a modern Western method of education.
An analysis of the two collections, of intertextually related pieces and of diﬀerent versions of
single songs shows that the collective process of genre development and the individual process ofsong composition were closely intertwined. The aim of my analysis was to uncover the problems
faced by composers when they composed a single song. Particular solutions were often required to
fulﬁl all the demands of the strict stylistic framework of the genre, while meeting the conditions of a
speciﬁc poem. While similarity to an already existing song was not avoided when a new song wascomposed, the eﬀort to create a diﬀerence can also be observed clearly in some cases. My analysis
gives special attention to heterophonic techniques that characterize the relation between voice andaccompaniment. Their use is constitutive for the musical form, and their analysis sheds light on theaesthetic signiﬁcance of each song. An analytical approach to the gagaku song repertoire provides
us with a fascinating insight into how musical creativity was performed under the circumstances ofa quickly changing cultural environment in the early modernization period of Japan.

Introduction
Today, a signiﬁcant majority of the Japanese people participate in Westernmusical culture (in the broadest sense); as composers, arrangers, performers or
producers; as teachers or students; as writers, translators, editors or publishers ofmusic literature; as programmers of music software; as workers in the musicindustry; as members of non-professional music ensembles; or, not the least, as
consumers. Even outside Japan, for example in Europe or in the United States,
the contribution of Japanese artists and companies to Western musical culture is
everywhere evident. The question of how and why this came to be should be ofinterest to all historical musicologists.
Although there was some Western music in Japan as early as the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, the roots of Japan’s participation in the Western musicaltradition lie in the late nineteenth century and are closely connected to the end of
seclusion (1854) and the consequent process of modernization in Japan. Although240

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Japan never became a Western colony, these changes occurred under strongpressure from Western colonial politics, and thus the Japanese modernization canbe seen, from a global viewpoint, as a part of the history of nineteenth-century
Western colonialism, or, in other words, as a chapter of Western history. So it
might not be as strange as it seems at the ﬁrst glance that an article focusing on
modernization in a traditional Japanese music genre is to be found in a journalthat focuses on nineteenth-century Western music culture.
There is already a certain tradition in musicology of looking at themodernization of Japanese music culture mainly as a history of the ‘introduction’or ‘reception’ of Western music into Japan.1 This view, however, systematicallyoverlooks the areas of musical creativity. In the early period of modernization, thepeople concerned with the introduction and reception of Western music were –with a few distinguished exceptions – not professional musicians, but militaryleaders, missionaries, educators and politicians with limited musical ability.
Musical creativity, on the other hand, naturally took place mainly in those realmsof musical culture where musical ability and professional experience wereavailable, namely among traditional musicians, who had limited access to andknowledge of Western music. That the reception of Western music was not an
important part of their musical creativity does not mean, however, that theircreativity had nothing to do with modernization.
First, although there is no question that modernization often went along with
Western inﬂuences, ‘Western inﬂuences’ in musical culture do not necessarilymean inﬂuences of Western music. In the late nineteenth century, a modern(Western) method of education, with singing as an essential element, wasintroduced in Japan. Japanese educators studied the use of songs in this method
and looked for a way to introduce singing to Japanese educational institutions as
well. In the case of gagaku songs, however, the existing music itself was not
introduced. Instead, new Japanese songs were composed for the method.
So although the style of the new songs was strongly shaped by the character ofthe new method as well as by other tendencies of the modernization period, andthus it was certainly a ‘modern’ style, the reception of Western melodies played aminor role in this process.
Second, the modernization of Japan had another face, which deliberately
rejected outside inﬂuences – not only those from the West, but also those fromthe Asian continent, which had informed Japanese culture for many centuries.
This is why the radical changes at the beginning of modernity in Japan are also
called a ‘Restoration’.2 On the one hand, the Restoration was a consequence of a
1
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley
Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 12, ‘Japan’, for example, labels theperiod after 1868 as ‘period of international music’ (816), ‘Western inﬂuences’ (817) and‘period of Westernization’ (884) (the ﬁrst two citations are from parts written by KISHIBE
Shigeo, the last one by David W. Hughes). The section of the ‘Japan’ article in MGG
devoted to the period 1868–1945 addresses only developments in Western music andmentions traditional music only as a matter of continuation. See ‘Japan’, in Die Musik inGeschichte und Gegenwart, second edition, edited by Ludwig Finscher, Sachteil, vol. 4,(Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1996): 1372–4, written by Wolfgang Burde.
2
Many historians today prefer to call the political changes after 1868 the ‘Meiji
revolution’ rather than the ‘Meiji Restoration’, because they believe that the revolutionary
elements outweigh the Restorationist ones in importance; but the existence of a
Restorationist ideology cannot be denied, and it has special signiﬁcance for our case study.

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then two-centuries-old school of thought – the so-called ‘national studies’], which may even be described as an ‘anti-modern’ rather than a[kokugaku,
modern movement. On the other hand, the ‘national studies’, and their inﬂuence
on Japanese intellectuals, were used to legitimize and shape the modern nationthat would eventually compete with the Western nation states. The banishmentof all foreign things, even the traditional ones rooted in daily life, and theinsistence on a Restoration of the ‘true old’ Japan, was thus an important part ofthe process of building a modern nation state. The creation of gagaku songs wasperhaps one of the most Restorationist musical attempts of this era.
To be sure, a Restorationist approach in general requires more creativity than
the introduction of a foreign entity, especially in music, where the Restoration ofa practice more than 1,000 years old can only be a ﬁction. (One may remember
the intended ‘Restoration’ of the Ancient Greek tragedy in sixteenth-century
Italy that resulted in the creation of modern opera.) In late-nineteenth-century
Japan, Restoration of true Japanese music meant creating a new music that
diﬀered from both Western and Asian continental music, as well as
contemporary Japanese music, and conformed to historical knowledge. To ﬁll
the desideratum of songs for a Western method of education with autochthonousmusic was a diﬃcult task, certainly more diﬃcult than it would have been
to import the Western melodies together with the method. In the end, thisdiﬃculty, and the pressure to reach acceptable results in a short time, made theintroduction of Western melodies prevail in public music education over allcompeting projects. The surviving relicts of educational music of that time thus
create the misleading impression that innovation was mainly bound to theintroduction of Western music. But in reality, the development of modernmusical creativity in Japan started not from the introduction of Westernmusic, but from traditional music. The signiﬁcance of gagaku songs for thisdevelopment is reﬂected in the fact that a number of composers of gagaku
songs were among the ﬁrst who succeeded in composing Western-style songs
somewhat later.3
This article is a case study of one of the many genres of Japanese traditionalmusic that appeared together with modernity.4 My aim is to shed some light onsong collections in a mostly Restorationist style that were compiled by gagaku
3

That gagaku musicians were pioneers in the study of Western music can be read inalmost all writings about late-nineteenth-century Japanese music history, and that thesame names occur as composers of gagaku style and Western style songs is also frequently
mentioned, but the relation between these two creative activities is seldom discussed. In
her important study ‘Meijiki no kyūchū ni okeru sakkyoku katsudō: Hoiku shōka no keifu’[Musical composition in the Imperial Court during the Meiji era], Journal of the Society for
Research in Asiatic Music (Japan) 74 (2009): 25–46), NAKAMURA Mayuko has shown that thestep from traditional to Western composition was not ‘typical’ for the gagaku musicians ofthat time: only a minority of composers later engaged in Western composition, while themajority continued to be involved with gagaku style compositions, although they were also
forced to develop their ability in the performance of Western music.
4
For research on other genres, see the other articles in this issue. Regarding thesecularization of shakuhachi music see Tone TAKAHASHI, Tozan-Ryū: An Innovation of the
Shakuhachi Tradition from Fuke-Shū to Secularism (PhD diss., The Florida State University,
1990; UMI 2112119), especially 120–32, 138–42, 145–7, 170–73, 183–7, and the analyses
248–87. Regarding traditional folk song in modern society see David W. Hughes,
Traditional folk song in modern Japan: sources, sentiment and society (Folkestone: Global
Oriental, 2008) and other publications of the same author. And on the ‘new Japanese242

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professionals – members of the imperial court music department – between 1877
and 1884 for a decidedly modern education. As one of the earliest examples ofmodern composition in Japan, this music attracts special interest, but it hasreceived little analytical study.5 Since my aim is to write this article as a part of
the history of globalizing Western music, I will use a method of research that ismore common for Western musical studies than for ethnomusicology: that ofasking about the ‘compositional problems’ that the composers dealt with. Thisshould not be done, however, without a consideration of whether and how
Western concepts of musical analysis are applicable for the subject. I therefore
begin with this question before proceeding to a more precise demarcation of
the term ‘gagaku song’. After a treatment of technical questions relating to theanalysis of gagaku songs, and an overview of music-theoretical categories and theways in which they have changed during the compilation period, I close withanalyses of three songs.
Questions
What kind of compositional problems did late-nineteenth-century composers ofgagaku songs face, and how did they solve them? What characterizes the musicalstructure of their works? Before we try to answer these questions, it might beuseful to question the questions themselves: are gagaku songs a musical genre inwhich ‘composers’ dealt with ‘compositional problems’ and created ‘works’ witha ‘musical structure’? These are concepts primarily associated with Westernclassical music, and they imply a concept of individuality of the creator andoriginality of the created that is by no means universal to all music.
music’ for koto and shamisen of the 1920’s, see KATSUMURA Jinko, ‘Some Innovations inMusical Instruments of Japan during the 1920’s’, Yearbook for Traditional Music 18 (1986):
157–72.
5
IBUKIYAMA Mahoko has performed statistical analyses of the use of scale tones andmelodic movements in the ﬁrst collection of modern gagaku songs, Hoiku shōka. She
concludes that the melodies of Hoiku shōka are similar to traditional gagaku pieces in somerespects, but have nothing in common with Western songs. See IBUKIYAMA Mahoko, Hoiku
shōka ni tsuite [On the ‘childcare songs’] (MA thesis, Ochanomizu University, 1976) and
IBUKIYAMA Mahoko, ‘Hoiku shōka ni tsuite’ [On the ‘childcare songs’], Journal of the Society for
Research in Asiatic Music (Japan) 44 (1979): 1–26. KUBO Masami has analysed the generalcharacteristics of the accompaniment, and the melodic characteristics of Hoiku shōka songs,
focusing on tendencies that are diﬀerent from traditional gagaku accompaniments andmelodies. She argues that there may be Western inﬂuences on a very structural level, suchas the ‘individual accompaniment for every piece’. See KUBO Masami, ‘Hoiku shōka nowagon bansō ni tsuite’ [A Study of accompaniment by wagon of Hoikusyoka], Gakugei
40 (1993): 41–51, and ‘Hoiku shōka ni kansuru kenkyū: Hoiku shōka to gagaku no senritsu nohikaku’ [On melodies of ‘Hoikusyoka’: A comparative study between ‘hoikusyoka’ and‘gagaku’], Gakugei 41 (1994): 71–9. HONDA Sahomi compared Hoiku shōka melodies withtraditional gagaku songs using a diﬀerent method from Ibukiyama. She came to similar
conclusions as Ibukiyama concerning the melodies written in the ritsu mode; but shesees essentially new tendencies in the songs in the ryo mode. See HONDA Sahomi, ‘Meiji-ki
shinsaku gagaku shōka (Hoiku shōka) no ongakuteki seikaku – Meiji shoki ni okeru
wayō settchū shōka no gutai’ [The musical features of gagaku-shōka in the Meiji era(Hoiku-Shōka)], Chiba Daigaku Kyōikugaku Kenkyū kiyō II: Jinbun-Shakai-Kagaku-Hen [Bulletinof the Faculty of Education, Chiba University, II: Humanities and Social Sciences]
45 (1997): 93–103).

Gottschewski: Nineteenth-Century Gagaku Songs

243‘Composer’
In the great majority of contemporaneous sources for late-nineteenth-century
gagaku songs, each song is preceded by a few formalized head lines containing
the song’s title, the origin or author of the words, the composer’s name, including
his rank in the hierarchy of court musicians, and a number of technical terms
specifying the genre, key, scale, metre and length of the song.6 That thecomposer’s name is seldom omitted, means that a kind of authorship was
attributed to the one who had attached the music to the words; the obligatory
mention of the oﬃcial rank, on the other hand, reﬂects the fact that the author
was working as a representative of his professional community. The compositions were commissioned to the court music department, and it seems that they
were then assigned to individual members. The completed pieces were returnedto their commissioners through the head of the department. Thus, although eachpiece had an individual author, it belonged to a collection that was theintellectual and artistic property of the department. If an author introduced
something new, it was also a new achievement for the community, and he could
do so only in accordance with the social relations within his group – either
because he was acknowledged by his colleagues as an especially powerful
specialist in that area, or because the innovation was approved by such anauthority. In either case, the author did not retain rights to the innovation, which
was available for use in new songs by his colleagues.
‘Work’A gagaku song can thus be described as the work of a professional collective: theauthor of a single song was the collective, as represented by an individual
member. The new songs were copied by all members of the court music
department into their personal song books, and became part of the court musicrepertoire taught in the gagaku school and performed in public concerts.
], and ‘notes’ meant theComposition was called ‘choice of notes’ [sen-fu,], in which each note stands for a shortneumatic gagaku notation [hakase,melody. To compose was to choose from existing melodies rather than to invent
new ones. As I have shown in another article, even the Japanese national anthem,composed in 1880 by court musicians for a Western style military band, and thus
not a typical gagaku song, consists mainly of common phrases of gagaku songs;
the only phrases that are not common ones are closely related to an earlier
version of the national anthem that was composed by a Westerner.7
The individual author mentioned at the beginning of a song was responsible
for the choice of melodic phrases, and it was acceptable to choose even longer
sections of other songs if they ﬁtted to the new words. The choice of a whole6
For an example with explanation see Hermann Gottschewski, ‘Poetic Form andMusical Form Performed and Written – European and Asian Cultures Compared’, in
Research on Art and Music in Japan. A Colloquy with Foreign Scholars Resident in Japan, ed.
Patricia Fister and HOSOKAWA Shūhei (Kyoto: International Research Center for JapaneseStudies, 2007): 187–208, here 200. Also online at http://fusehime.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/
gottschewski/online.html.
7Hermann Gottschewski, ‘Hoiku shōka and the melody of the Japanese national
anthem Kimi ga yo’, Journal of the Society for Research in Asiatic Music (Japan) 68 (2003):(1)–(17). (Henceforth ‘Hoiku shōka and Kimi ga yo’).

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pre-existing melody for a new poem did not qualify for new authorship,
however. There are several cases where pre-existing melodies were used insteadof composing a new melody, and in those cases no author is mentioned, but
the title of the song whose melody was used is speciﬁed.8 Every authorizedcomposition is thus new as a whole, but not necessarily in any of its parts.
A single ‘work’ had to conform with the collection, and as a whole it had to bemusically distinguishable from the other songs of the collection.
‘Musical structure’
The technical information specifying the genre, key, scale, metre and length of thesong that headed each song was based on the music theory of gagaku, but in asomewhat modernized and standardized form.9 Since the court musicians were
responsible for this standardization, they must have been very much aware of
the formal and structural aspects of the music; and this awareness is reﬂected incontemporaneous writings.
Another structural factor is the metrical structure of the poetry. Only very
formalized poems in the conservative style of court poetry were proposed forcomposition. And a third structural feature relies on the rhythmic order provided
by the accompanying instruments. The rhythm is measured by the regular beats], a type of wooden clappers, which guarantees aof the shakubyōshi [regular tempo. Most songs are also accompanied by an ostinato, played on the, a six-stringed zither], which is repeated several times throughout thewagon [
piece, although the melody of the song normally does not contain any repetition.
The use of wagon ostinatos for accompaniment was adopted from traditional
gagaku genres, but, in contrast to them, the gagaku song accompaniments are notcommon for the whole genre, but (essentially) individual for every piece. The
wagon patterns therefore form an individual structural background, which isheard throughout the performance of a song.
‘Compositional problems’
It can be assumed that the commissioner of a song gave a poem to the,court music department and prescribed the genre of the song, such as shōka [, ‘play-song’ without‘singing piece’ with wagon accompaniment] or yūgi [wagon accompaniment], so that these elements were not a matter of choice for thecomposer. Other elements might be prescribed by the head of the department, orwere determined by convention. If, for example, the poem contained a reference
to one of the four seasons, the key of the song was pre-determined, by a rulethat was given in the textbooks that were used by the court musicians in teaching
and learning.
8
Later, songs that shared a melody were eliminated, and every song text was given a
melody originally composed for it. An exception is a melody that was originally composedby TōGI Yoriharu (1834–1898) for the song ‘Sazareishi’. It was re-used for another poem,‘Futami no ura’, by FUJIWARA no Kanesuke (877–933), when ‘Sazareishi’ disappeared fromthe collection (see Gottschewski, ‘Hoiku shōka and Kimi ga yo’, note 8). In eﬀect, then,‘Futami no ura’ neither has an original melody, nor shares a melody with any other songsof the collection. Both songs can be heard on Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 6/27 and 6/26 (seebelow note 19).
9
For an example see note 9 in TSUKAHARA Yasuko’s article in this issue.

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In any case, the very strict limitations of each formal category made it necessary
to ﬁnd a strategy to fulﬁl all requirements, and, as we will see in our analysis,
dealing with conﬂicting requirements was no small challenge. Since there was no
tradition of song composition among the court musicians at the beginning of theera of gagaku songs, it is very unlikely that the composers had received any
instruction to support them in solving these problems. They may have supported
each other with their ideas and experience, but in many cases they would have toﬁnd a new solution through new strategies. So ‘compositional problems’ really did
exist for gagaku song composers, and it is an interesting challenge for musicalanalysis to determine what they were and how they were solved.
Subject of Analysis
For the purposes of this article, ‘gagaku songs of the late nineteenth century’means songs that were commissioned oﬃcially to the court music department10
and composed in a non-Western style by its eligible members (or authorized
by them),11 during the ﬁrst half of the Meiji Era (1868–1912).12 The most,important collections of gagaku songs, in this sense, are Hoiku shōka [Childcare songs],13 of which there are about 100 songs, and Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka
10

The oﬃcial name of the court music department, from 1877 to 1884, was Gagaku
Department of the Chamber of Ceremonies in the Imperial Household Ministry, Kunaishō Shikiburyō Gagakuka]. Due to reorganization, the name[changed several times, but essentially the department has existed from its foundation at the
court in Tokyo in 1869 until the present. See for example TERAUCHI Naoko, Gagaku no ‘kindai’to ‘gendai’. Keishō, fukyū, sōzō no kiseki [The ‘modern’ and the ‘contemporary’ in gagaku:Continuity, dissemination and creative renewal] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2010): 12.
11
The duty of composing songs was assigned to court musicians above a certain
rank only. For example, songs by the kindergarten teacher KONDō Hama are indicated as‘revised by’ a member of the court music department in most primary sources and thus
also have an individually responsible professional authorizer. About the process ofrevision see SOGA Yoshie, ‘Shōka yūgi no seiritsu katei ni kansuru kenkyū: Gagakuroku ni
mirareru Hoiku Shōka no seiritsu katei kara’ [Study of the creation process of ‘singing
dance’: The writing process of Hoiku-shoka (childcare songs) found in the Gagaku-roku(The Oﬃcial Documents of Japanese Imperial Court Music)], Taiikugaku kenkyū [Research
Journal of Physical Education] 53 (2008): 304. It should be noted that some points Soga
claims to have discovered for the ﬁrst time are already mentioned in older publications.
12
In the second half of the Meiji era and later, a number of single gagaku songs werecommissioned from inside the court, as Nakamura has pointed out (‘Meijiki no kyūchū niokeru sakkyoku katsudō’, 35–41). They were mainly composed for private occasions at the
court and for representative festivities such as the silver wedding of the Emperor (1894),
the 1100-year-anniversary of the old capital of Kyōto (1895) and the wedding of the crownprince (1900). Since the songs are spread over a longer period and composed for special
occasions, each of them would require a separate consideration.
13
I have adopted the translation ‘Childcare songs’ from Soga, ‘Creation Process of‘Singing Dance’. The term shōka has two diﬀerent meanings in Hoiku shōka. In the wider
sense, it means ‘singing’ as opposed to playing instruments, or ‘singing instructions’ foreducation. In the narrower sense, it means accompanied ‘singing pieces’ as opposed tounaccompanied ‘play-songs’. Hoiku shōka includes both singing pieces and play-songs. In
other contemporaneous sources, the word shōka is used with other meanings, for example‘words of a song’ as opposed to the melody, or ‘singing instrumental melodies withmnemonics’. In traditional Japanese music the word is still used with the last mentioned

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Nineteenth-Century Music Review[, Songs for the Institute for Research of the Imperial Classics],
with 24 songs. Both collections were commissioned by educational institutions.
In the wider sense, songs that were composed by members of the court music
department for private purposes or by independent commission, and songs
composed in the style of gagaku songs by non-members of the court music
department, including non-professional gagaku scholars, should also be considered
as gagaku songs. There is a great variety of such songs in various kinds of sources,
but their diversity makes it diﬃcult to draw a line between proper gagaku songs
and other songs that are only inﬂuenced by gagaku style. Furthermore, it is diﬃcult
to discuss this question without an analysis of the stylistic features of gagaku songs.
For this reason, this paper focuses only on the two collections.
The beginning of Hoiku shōka lies in the commission of two songs forthe opening ceremony of the Kindergarten of the Tokyo Women’s Normal, Tōkyō Joshi Shihangakkō fuzoku Yōchien]
School [in 1877.14 Thereafter, until 1880, about 100 songs for kindergarten children andolder students were composed and taught by court musicians to students at theTokyo Women’s Normal School and other schools. The names of 24 court
musicians and one kindergarten teacher, the only woman who contributed to themusic of an oﬃcial gagaku song collection,15 are mentioned in the sources ascomposers of Hoiku shōka.
From 1880 to 1882 the work on the collection seems to have paused, perhaps
because, after the foundation of the Institute of Music of the Ministry of Education] in 1879 and the[Monbushō Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari,appointment of Luther Whiting Mason as the ﬁrst foreign teacher for musiceducation, the court musicians concentrated on the study of Western music.16 In
1882 and 1883, after Mason had returned to America, the work on Hoiku shōka wasresumed. In this period the earlier songs underwent a fundamental revision,17 anda number of melodies were added and others deleted. At that point, the songs
were already used in a number of educational institutions throughout the country.
The plan of publication seems to have failed, however, and the collection fell out of
use within a few years.18 Only a few songs found their way into later songbooks.
meaning, but it is pronounced ‘shōga’ (written with the same Chinese characters), whilesince around 1900 the word ‘shōka’ has meant mainly Western style ‘school songs’. Since
most sources give no explanation, it is diﬃcult to know which of the various usages of theword were pronounced ‘shōka’ and which ‘shōga’ at the end of nineteenth century. There isgood reason to believe that the ‘Hoiku shōga’ would be historically more correct, but the
pronunciation ‘Hoiku shōka’ is most widespread today.
14
See also the article by TSUKAHARA Yasuko in this issue, page 226.
15
See also note 11, above.
16
See Gottschewski, ‘Hoiku shōka and Kimi ga yo’, (1). A notice in the chronicle of thecourt music department, of 20 May 1880 – the last day new songs were added before thetwo-year break – suggests that, at that time, the compilation was regarded as ‘ﬁnished’ anda later resumption was not planned. See TSUKAHARA Yasuko , Jūkyūseiki no Nihon ni okeru
seiyō ongaku no juyō [The reception of western music in nineteenth century Japan] (Tokyo:
Taga, 1993): 567.
17
Hermann Gottschewski, ‘Musikalische Schriftsysteme und die Bedeutung ihrer‘‘Perspektive’’ für die Musikkultur: Ein Vergleich europäischer und japanischer Quellen’,in Schrift: Kulturtechnik zwischen Auge, Hand und Maschine, ed. Gernot Grube, Werner
Kogge und Sibylle Krämer (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2005): 267 and 272–6.
18
The use in schools ended a few years after 1882, when the ﬁrst songbooks with
Western melodies published by the Ministry of Education came into use, but Hoiku shōka

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Hoiku shōka is preserved in the traditional gagaku notation in many handwritten copies, representing diﬀerent stages of the compilation. A number ofthem were written by court musicians who participated in the collection ascomposers, and some of the most important sources remain in the private
collections of the families of court musicians.19
Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka was compiled in 1883 or 1884 for the Kōtenkōkyūsho, aschool founded to educate Shinto clergymen. The songs were taught there forsome years, but never found a wider distribution. Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka consists of
24 songs composed by 24 court musicians, 21 of whom had also contributed to
Hoiku shōka.
As already mentioned, gagaku songs are performed with the accompaniment of
shakubyōshi and wagon. For Hoiku shōka, but not for Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka, there exists
a complete set of accompaniments for the sō [ ], a thirteen-stringed zither (theinstrument is often simply called ‘koto’ [ ], although the term koto, in its proper use,comprises other zithers as well, including the wagon), which was added for practicalreasons after most of the songs were already composed. The sō accompaniment
seems to have no new structural function in the song. The same is the case for thearrangements for full gagaku orchestra that exist for some of the songs.
Method of Analysis
The structure of the original notation of gagaku songs forced the composer towrite down the words of the poem ﬁrst (potentially even before he began tocompose the song) and to add the melody afterwards.20 This reﬂects acompositional process that gives priority to the words and regards melodies assomething ‘attached to the words’. While the poem is visible as formed language,
continued to be taught in the court music department and performed regularly at its publicconcerts until about 1894 – even later inside the court. See Nakamura, ‘Meijiki no kyūchū
ni okeru sakkyoku katsudō’, 30–35.
19
Photographic reproductions of sources for a number of songs from Hoiku shōka,
and an experimentally reconstructed performance based on those sources, were publishedin CD 5 (no. 12–16) and 6 (all numbers) of Genten ni yoru kindai shōka shūsei [Collection ofModern [Japanese] Songs Based on Primary Sources] (henceforth Kindai shōka shūsei), a
collection of thirty audio CDs and nine volumes of original documents, transcriptions andessays, edited by YASUDA Hiroshi et al. (Tokyo: Victor Entertainment, 2000). The sections
relating to gagaku songs are edited, with commentary, by the author. The texts as well astranscriptions into Western notation of the melodies (without accompaniment) of almost
all songs from Hoiku shōka were edited by SHIBA Sukehiro in 1955, 1958 and 1959, in
manuscript. Most of these manuscript editions are reproduced (albeit in poor quality) in
Ongaku kiso kenkyū bunkenshū [Basic research collection of musical sources], ed. EZAKI Kimiko(Tokyo: Ōzorasha, 1991): vol. 15, 1–200 and 503–49. The original manuscripts are held by
the Kunitachi College of Music Library. The texts of Hoiku shōka from one of the mostimportant primary sources are also published online by the Ochanomizu University Web
Library (http://hdl.handle.net/10083/33717). Few books or articles in Western languages
make more than passing reference to Hoiku shōka. Apart from the articles by the author,
cited elsewhere in this article, perhaps the most detailed and most recent one is by Noriko
MANABE: Western Music in Japan: The Evolution of Styles in Children’s Songs, Hip-Hop andOther Genres (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2009), 77 and 82–97. Since Manabe
uses only secondary sources (and not in any case the most reliable ones), however, there
are a number of mistakes in her study.
20
See Gottschewski, ‘Musikalische Schriftsysteme’, 260–61 and 270–76.

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Nineteenth-Century Music Review

and is readable independently from the music, the connection between the
melodic fragments is constituted only through the connection between thesyllables to which they are attached. The phrasing is indicated by lines between
the text syllables and is thus a property of the words rather than the melody.21
In discussing compositional problems, we must not forget that traditional
notation was the perspective from which gagaku song composers viewed theirown and others’ works. Even if we ﬁnd that a deep insight into genuinely
musical forms was indispensable to compose a gagaku song, these forms werealways attached to words, which came with their own form. My analysis thus
begins with the words and then proceeds to the musical form.
Notwithstanding the role of the poetic form in the musical structure, musicaltime in gagaku songs is strictly cyclic, and is regulated by the ostinato of theaccompanying instruments. The concept of timing is also graphically obvious in thewagon notation, where the symbols for the beats of the shakubyōshi form a geometricgrid along which the notation is arranged.22 Since the instrumental notation isseparated from the vocal notation, however, the interrelation between the poetic
form of the vocal part and the cyclic form of the instruments is not obvious from thenotation.23 Like medieval and renaissance Western polyphonic music, where thevoices are notated separately, what sounds together can only be experienced in areal performance or calculated by counting beats in both notations. It is not known
which strategies court musicians used to imagine the interaction between melody
and accompaniment to conceptualize the musical form of a song.
In order to understand how gagaku composers worked on their songs weshould actually put ourselves in their perspective and use the original notationfor our analysis. Considering the fact, however, that most readers of this article
are unfamiliar with East Asian scripts in general, and gagaku notations inparticular, we will illustrate our analysis with transnotations to Western staﬀ
notation. Fortunately, the most essential musical parameters shown in thenotation of gagaku songs, namely pitches and rhythmic values, are commensurable to Western staﬀ notation, so that the transnotation is unambiguous in mostcases. A transcription of Hoiku shōka to Western notation was published by SHIBA
Sukehiro,24 but it does not include the accompaniment, and it shows, as a rule,
only one version for each song. His transcription is a kind of compromise
between a transnotation, which tries to preserve the structural and symbolic
information of the original notation, and a translation to Western notation, whichtries to render how a performance of the score sounds. The examples in this21

An example of this notation can be seen in a source called[shōkafu] in thelibrary of Waseda University and accessible online at the homepage of the library (http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/chi11/chi11_04038/chi11_04038.html). The manuscript,
which contains the 24 songs of Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka, is written on an oﬃcial paper of the
Chamber of Ceremonies and takes a seal of the Kōtenkōkyūsho at the page where the ﬁrst
song begins. But the title of the collection, the sources of the words and the names of thecomposers are not mentioned. The manuscript does not include accompaniments. For
examples of Hoiku shōka notation with explanation, see Gottschewski, ‘Musikalische
Schriftsysteme’, 271, 272 and 275, and Gottschewski, ‘Poetic Form and Musical Form
Performed and Written’, 200. See also note 19.
22
See examples in Gottschewski, ‘Musikalische Schriftsysteme’, 271, andGottschewski, ‘Poetic Form and Musical Form Performed and Written’, 200.
23
Gottschewski, ‘Musikalische Schriftsysteme’, 269–71.
24
See note 19.

Gottschewski: Nineteenth-Century Gagaku Songs249

article are in a rather mechanical transnotation that looks less familiar to Westerneyes, but forces the reader to think in the categories of gagaku music theory,
especially with regard to beats and metre.25
Some of our transnotations show the vocal part vertically arranged above theaccompanying pattern (see Figure 5, below). The synchronous display is usefulfor musical analysis, but we should be aware that it is doubtless diﬀerent fromwhat the court musicians had in mind when they composed the songs. Our
analysis will proceed from the general to the speciﬁc, beginning from a
description of the style and ending with analyses of three songs.
Structural Categories
Form of the Poem
The gagaku songs use as texts either poems from the Man’yōshū (eighth century)and the ancient imperial collections or newer poems in the style of the ancient
poetry.26 Even the earliest gagaku songs of the Meiji Era, which were based ontranslations of Western song texts,27 follow these extremely conservative forms.
This means that all poems begin with a ﬁve-syllable clause,28 followed by one ormore pairs of clauses with seven and ﬁve syllables, and ending with a pair of] (5 7–5 7–7), while
seven and seven syllables.29 The shortest form is the tanka [25

Some questions of transcription are discussed in KUBO Masami, ‘Hoiku shōka no
gosenfuka ni kansuru mondaiten ni tsuite’ [On problems of transcription of Childcare Songs
to western notation], Kansai gakuri kenyū [Kansai Studies of Music theory], 10 (1993): 79–88,
and in Kubo, ‘Hoiku shōka no wagon bansō ni tsuite’.
26
On the texts of Hoiku shōka see NAKAYAMA Eiko, Meiji shōka no tanjō [The birth of theshōka of the Meiji era] (Tokyo: Bensei, 2010): 1–41 and FUJITA Fumiko, ‘Hoiku shōka no
kenkyū: Fröbel-shiki yōchien shōka yūgi inyū no keika o chūshin to shite’ [Research on
Hoiku Shōka: With a focus on the introduction of kindergarten songs and plays for the
Froebel method], in Kunitachi Ongaku Daigaku sōritsu 50shūnen kinen ronbunshū [Collectionof essays in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Kunitachi College of Music] (Tachikawa:
Kunitachi Ongaku Daigaku, 1978): 329–69. The texts of Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka have not yet
been subject to detailed study, but some aspects are mentioned in Hermann Gottschewski,‘Gonda Naosuke henjutsu Shinkyō kafu: Sanbika to shōka no hazama kara okotta Meiji
shoki shintō no uta’ [Gonda Naosuke’s Song Notation of the Shintō Religion: Shintō Songs
from the Early Meiji Era Between Church Hymns and Shōka], Nihon HikakubungakukaiTōkyō Shibu kenkyū hōkoku [Research report of the Tōkyō section of the Japan Comparative
Literature Association] No. 5 (Sept. 2008): 60–61. The character of the texts ofKōtenkōkyūsho shōka is essentially similar to the later Hoiku shōka.
27
See TSUKAHARA Yasuko’s article in this issue, note 8.
28
Linguists use the term ‘mora’ rather than ‘syllable’ for the smallest rhythmic unit of
the Japanese language, but for the application of classical Japanese lyrics to songs thediﬀerence between the concept of ‘mora’ and ‘syllable’ is not very important. The ‘mora’ inclassical Japanese consists of a short vowel preceded or not preceded by a single
consonant. The half-vowel ‘n’, however, can also form a mora and is thus often treated likea syllable in songs. Except for the short postpositions, most Japanese words have between
two and ﬁve syllables, and there is no stress accent. When ﬁve-syllable clauses and sevensyllable clauses are mentioned in this article, I include cases where the actual number ofsyllables is six or eight due to certain rules of syllable augmentation.
29
Although literary scholars prefer to speak of one or more 5–7 pairs followed by a
5–7–7 clause, due to the semantic structure of the ancient poetry, the description given here

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Fig. 1a

The D ritsu scale (ichikotsuchō rissen)

Fig. 1b

The A ritsu scale (ōshikichō rissen)

the longer forms are called chōka [].30 The use of these ancient forms contrasts
to most other songs composed in the same era, namely the songs compiled by the
Ministry of Education, including most of the gagaku style ‘ceremonial songs’.
Although the composers probably had no inﬂuence on the selection of texts, thepoetic form is one of the important stylistic characteristics of the gagaku songs.
In all songs the beginning ﬁve-syllable clause is sung unaccompanied, by themusical leader. The wagon accompaniment begins with the last syllable of theﬁrst clause, and the other singers begin with the second clause. The songs aresung in unison.
Key and Scale
Gagaku songs have a genuine theory of scales, which is derived from traditional
gagaku scales. The theory stipulates two modes, ryo and ritsu, usable in varioustranspositions, and two mixed scales. The theory and usage of the scales changedslightly during the compilation period. Since tonal analysis is not the focus of thisarticle, only the scales used in the examples are displayed in Figures 1a and 1b in] (used in Figures 3
Western notation. They are called ichikotsuchō rissen [] (used in Figure 5). These are ritsu scales
and 4) and ōshikichō rissen [based on the key notes D and A, respectively. As in a Western melodic minor scale,the ﬁfth degree of the pentatonic ritsu scale is raised by a half tone if the melody
ascends, so that the ascending scale is diﬀerent from the descending scale.
In singing practice the second and the descending ﬁfth degree may be lowered
somewhat, as shown in Figure 3c, but the transnotations here show the pitches
as they are notated and stated to be correct by contemporaneous theoretical
writings. For technical reasons, the wagon uses the tones of the descending scalein ascending as well.
Beat and Metre31
The gagaku songs with accompaniment belong to two types of metre, ‘quick] and ‘slow metre’ [shizu-hyōshi,]. They consist
metre’ [haya-hyōshi,
better ﬁts the musical structure of gagaku songs. It seems that when the court musicians of
the nineteenth century read ancient poetry they were inﬂuenced in their reading by arhythmic feeling acquired from the experience of more recent Japanese lyrics.
30
In the two collections discussed here, the only songs that are neither tanka nor chōka
are those discussed in note 44, below, and the song ‘I ro ha’ (Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 6/22).
The text of the latter is the traditional Japanese syllable alphabet, which is also a poem, but
in another metrical form.
31
A more comprehensive description of the metres of Hoiku shōka can be found in
Gottschewski, ‘Hoiku shōka and Kimi ga yo’, (3)–(4).

Gottschewski: Nineteenth-Century Gagaku Songs

Fig. 2aTwo hyperbars in quick four metre

Fig. 2b

One hyperbar in slow four metre251

of rhythmical units called ‘big times’ [, written as ], ‘small times’ [,, written as J].32 Yin times are used in slow
written as ], and ‘yin times’ [metre only. Essentially all times have the same length, but only big times andsmall times are beat. One hyōshi (we will call it a ‘hyperbar’) consists of one bigtime and several small times. In slow metre a yin time occurs after every beat.
We call the time from one to the next beat a ‘bar’. For examples of metres, see
Figures 2a and 2b.
The transnotations use the minim for the (big, small and yin) times and barlines to indicate the beat times. Big time is indicated by a double bar line
immediately preceding it. (Please note that the double bar line does not coincidewith the boundaries of the hyperbars, since the big times do not fall on the] isbeginning of a hyperbar.) A song in quick four metre [haya-yo-hyōshi,thus written as a one-two time with a double bar line at every third bar of a
hyperbar (see Figure 5, below), and the slow metres are written as a two-twotime with double bar lines at the place of the big time (see Figures 3b and 4).
Phrase and breath
Phrasing is an essential part of gagaku song notation and thus a structuralelement of the music. Vertical red lines between text syllables in theoriginal notation indicate a continuous breath phrase, while the absence ofsuch a line shows a break in the phrase (see Figure 3a, below). Similarly thephrasing in the transnotations is shown by horizontal lines between the text
syllables (see Figures 3b and 5). In this article, the word ‘phrase’ always means a
section of the melody that is sung in one breath. As I have shown elsewhere,33
the treatment of phrases changed fundamentally between the earlier and later
Hoiku shōka, and the phrasings of many earlier gagaku songs were revisedaround 1882.
Embellishments
Gagaku song notation shows the rough melodic shape as lines drawn at the left
side of the text syllables, and the exact pitches with the Chinese characters for the
relative tone names – kyū [ ], shō [ ], kaku [ ], chi [ ], u [ ] for the ﬁve] for the heightened ﬁfth degree in the
pentatonic scale degrees and ei-u [ascending ritsu scale – above the lines (see Figure 3a). There are, however, two
32‘Yin’ – read ‘in’ in Japanese – refers to the dualism of yin and yang in Asian
thought. I conjecture that this naming refers to the ‘darkness’ of the musical time that is not‘highlighted’ by a beat in performance.
33
See Gottschewski, ‘Musikalische Schriftsysteme’, 266–77.

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Fig. 3aOriginal notation, manuscript of BUNNO Yoshiaki (1848–1920), who was also acomposer of Hoiku Shōka; to read from the top to the bottom, the neumes andthe columns from right to left.

Fig. 3bTransnotation of Bunno’s manuscript by the author.

Fig. 3c

Transcription by TANABE Hisao (1919).

Fig. 3dTranscription by SHIBA Sukehiro, after a photocopy of a manuscript
written by Shiba in 1955, original held by the Kunitachi College of Music
Library.

Gottschewski: Nineteenth-Century Gagaku Songs

Fig. 3e253

Another transcription by the same, after the photographical reproductionof a manuscript written by SHIBA in 1958, published in Ongaku kiso kenkyū
bunkenshū, 1991. The deviation of an octave in bars 3–5 in TANABE’stranscription may be due to a deviation in the source he used, but moreprobably, it is a mistake by the transcriber. On the deviating key signature in
Tanabe’s transcription see above page 000. The other deviations reﬂect thedivergent principles of transcription.

kinds of embellishments that are not shown as pitches: tsuku [] is a kind ofupper mordent, mostly performed on the second beat or unbeat time of a longer] is a kind ofnote, as at the seventh text syllable in Figure 3, and yuri [slow double lower mordent, performed on long notes (either kyū or chi) as on
the ﬁfth text syllable in Figure 3. There is no exact explanation of its performancein the primary sources of gagaku songs. The approximate performance may
be as shown in the transcriptions of TANABE Hisao34 and SHIBA Sukehiro (Figures
3c, 3d, 3e). In our transnotations we use signs similar to the original notation(Figure 3b).
Musical forms
While a majority of the gagaku songs, even many of the longer ones, have a linear
form and cannot easily be divided into parts, some forms use repetitions or
multipart concepts. A comprehensive description of them is beyond the scope of
this article. Larger songs are often divided into two or more dan [ ] (stanzas or
movements), either with the same melody or with diﬀerent melodies. Some of], a form that is used
the multipart forms adopt the concept of jo-ha-kyū35 [in traditional multipart gagaku pieces.
The forms of the earliest songs of Hoiku shōka show some inﬂuence from
Western songs, but this inﬂuence is hardly detectable in later songs. The variety
of approaches on the one hand and the establishment of common form concepts
for diﬀerent pieces on the other hand show that the development of larger
musical forms posed a continuous challenge for the individual composers as well
as for the collective of composers.
Accompaniment patterns
As already mentioned, gagaku songs – except the play-songs – are accompanied
not only by the regular beats of the shakubyōshi but also by an ostinato on thewagon. A wagon ostinato may be one or several hyperbars long, and the length ofan accompanied song is a multiple of the length of the wagon ostinato.
34
TANABE Hisao, Nihon ongaku kōwa [Lectures on Japanese Music] (Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 1919): appendix without page number.
35
See for example KIKKAWA Eishi, Nihon ongaku no seikaku [On the character ofJapanese music] (Tōkyō: Wanya , 1948): 194; German translation by Petra Rudolph, as Vom
Charakter der japanischen Musik, Studien zur traditionellen Musik Japans 2 (Kassel:
Bärenreiter, 1984): 155.

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Fig. 4Nineteenth-Century Music Review

Wagon ostinato of ‘Manabi no michi’

The structure and development of the wagon ostinatos show most clearly theinnovation in the gagaku songs and the peculiarities of the collective creative
process. The use of the wagon, which was believed to be one of the most authentic‘national’ instruments of Japan (as opposed to instruments imported from China
or elsewhere), was a strong and Restorationist symbol of the autonomous
development of a modern Japanese music. Founded in the old tradition of Shinto
ritual music, the ostinatos had no counterpart in the Western educational songs
that served as models for the early Hoiku shōka; yet the way in which they wereapplied to the new compositions had no model in traditional Japanese music.
Nevertheless, the foundations of the new concept were established in a very
short time and then adopted by all composers of gagaku songs.
The wagon patterns are composed of very simple elements. The wagon isplayed with a plectrum with the right hand and with the ﬁngers of the left hand.
The most important playing technique is to pluck all six strings either forth orback with the plectrum and to damp ﬁve or four of them immediately afterwards
with the ﬁngers of the left hand, so that after an arpeggio of all strings the soundof only one or two strings remains.36 Other techniques are to pluck all strings
without damping, to pluck only one string with the plectrum, or to pluck one,
two or (seldom) three strings together with the ﬁngers of the left hand. There areno other techniques used to modify the tone.
The rhythms used for the wagon patterns are also very simple. In slow metres,
one of the above-mentioned elements is played on every beat, and on the unbeat
times an element may be played or not. If an element is played on the unbeat
time, there may also be a tone (never an arpeggio or two tones played together)between the times. That means that in our transcription the rhythm of the wagon
can be written in semibreves, minims and crotchets, and there are no dottedrhythms, rests or syncopations. Figure 4 shows the wagon pattern of the songshown in Figure 3, a one-hyperbar pattern in slow ﬁve metre. The tones with ‘1’
mark are plucked with the left hand.
The same rhythms are used in quick four metre, replacing the unbeat times
by the second and fourth beat of the hyperbar, as seen in the lowest staﬀ ofFigure 5, below.
Since the wagon can only play the ﬁve main scale degrees in a closed oneoctave register, its melodic possibilities are very limited, and the rhythmic eﬀect
seems to prevail. In the longer ostinatos, however, its melodic signiﬁcance cannot
be ignored, and the change between the stable key tone, the relatively stable ﬁfth
and the unstable other scale degrees gives them a decisive shape.
Despite these restrictions, the characteristics of the wagon patterns show a great
variety, and the changes of their external form, elaboration, relation to the song
melody and intertextual structures tell us a story of continuous collective andindividual problem solving. At this point, we may turn to the external and collective
aspects, leaving the other aspects to the individual analysis at the end of the paper.
36This technique is also described in KIKKAWA, Nihon ongaku no seikaku, 210–11(176–7 in the German translation).

Gottschewski: Nineteenth-Century Gagaku Songs

The three songs ‘Hana tachibana’, ‘Shirogane’ and ‘Kashima no kami’ and their shared accompaniment.

255

Fig. 5

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Nineteenth-Century Music Review

The earliest nine songs with accompaniment, composed for the kindergarten
between November 1877 and February 1878 by nine diﬀerent composers, are allin quick four metre, and each song has an individual wagon pattern, which isfrom three to seven hyperbars long. The ostinato is played from two to six times.
It is surprising that the most essential properties of the wagon accompaniments
and the way they are related to the melody are already seen in the very ﬁrst song,, ‘Gathering in winter’], composed in 1877 by TōGI‘Fuyu no madoi’ [Suenaga.37 By the way, Suenaga was also the ﬁrst to use slow metre in Hoiku
shōka, namely in the song ‘Manabi no michi’ shown in Figures 3 and 4. If any
individual can be named for having coined the style of late-nineteenth-century
gagaku songs, it is TōGI Suenaga.
Two new tendencies can be seen in the next 21 songs with accompaniment,
composed from March to October 1878. First, while the song melodies become
more elaborated – some of them are apparently not for the kindergarten but for
older students – and now also use the slow four and ﬁve metres, the wagon
patterns tend to become shorter: for example, only two hyperbars in quick four
metre and one hyperbar in the slow metres. This means that the number ofrepetitions increases, and now ranges from 3 to 18 for simple songs and up to 44
in a multipart song. Second, some of the songs do not use new wagon patterns
but re-use the accompaniment of other songs, with longer and more complex
patterns particularly subject to re-use. One would perhaps expect that two songs
sharing a complex accompaniment become very similar in melody and character,but that is not the case. The re-use of accompaniments in this period forms arather subtle method of intertextual relationship between songs. It is remarkablethat this experimental approach to compositional structures was undertaken in adecisively collective process. The seven songs composed between April andOctober 1878 that re-use accompaniments are by seven diﬀerent composers; andwith one exception, the composer who re-uses an accompaniment is diﬀerent
from the original composer. Thereafter the re-use of accompaniments stopped,38
which also seems to have been a collective decision. While in most cases wecannot be certain in which order the melody and accompaniment werecomposed, the cases of re-use of accompaniment give us an interesting insight
into the process of creating musical structures in late-nineteenth-century Japan.
The next 21 songs, composed between November 1878 and September 1879,
continue the tendency of the previous songs, but every song now has its own
wagon pattern again, as in the ﬁrst period. The range of metres is extended by the
exceptional slow two, three, six and eight metres, and the slow metres become
predominant. The tendency to more elaborated and longer, multi-part songs
37

The words of the song are a versiﬁcation of a prose translation of the second stanzaof an English winter song, ‘Now we are in Winter’, which is itself a translation of theGerman song ‘Der Winter ist kommen’. See Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 5/12.
38
There is only one (much) later example in Hoiku shōka where a composer re-uses anaccompaniment, in that case one from his own songs. Many songs in Kōtenkōkyūsho shōkashare their accompaniments for a diﬀerent reason, discussed below. A special case is a
, Six Balls] or ‘Tama to iro’ [, Balls andsong cycle called ‘Muttsu no tama’ [colours], for Froebelian kindergarten education, consisting of nine songs composed bynine diﬀerent court musicians (Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 6/38–46). The nine songs share theirkey, scale, metre, length and wagon pattern. The song cycle was a late addition to the Hoiku
shōka and was abandoned shortly afterwards; it is found in only a few manuscripts. See
Gottschewski, ‘Hoiku shōka and Kimi ga yo’, note 8, sources (3) and (5).

Gottschewski: Nineteenth-Century Gagaku Songs257

also continues. The longest gagaku songs composed in the late nineteenth century
are from this period, an exemplary case being the ﬁve-part song ‘Ō Shōkun’, ‘Wang Zhaojun’], a poem by MURATA Harumi (1746–1811) composed by[
OKU Yoshiisa (1858–1933) and dated39 May 1879, which has a total length of 604
times.40 The longer songs do not use longer wagon patterns, but repeat themmore often. The ﬁrst four parts of ‘Ō Shōkun’, for example, are composed in slow
ﬁve metre, each of them diﬀerent in length and with its own melody, but using
the same wagon pattern of one hyperbar length, which is repeated 58 times. Evenin the ﬁfth part, written in quick four metre, a one-hyperbar pattern is used.
A one-hyperbar pattern in quick four metre is the shortest possible ostinato in a
gagaku song. Such short patterns make their ﬁrst appearance in this period, in thelast stanzas of multipart songs, which correspond to the kyū part of the jo-ha-kyū
concept. Later, they are also used in single short gagaku songs. Repeated every
few seconds, a pattern this short has no melodic relevance, but, besides its
rhythmic importance, also adds a sound colour to the piece.
In the following period, the regular production of gagaku songs graduallyceased, until it temporarily stopped between mid-1880 and spring of 1882.
Several songs that were added in this period were not newly composed, butwere new poems adapted to pre-existing melodies. Since not all later songs of
Hoiku shōka can be dated exactly, it is not possible to give an exact number for
how many songs were composed before the interruption, but a clear stylistic
tendency can be observed: songs become shorter again, quick metres prevail,wagon patterns remain individual for each song and very short patterns become
more frequent.
This tendency is even more obvious after the interruption. The songs that were
newly composed in 188241 are the shortest of all songs in Hoiku shōka, and almost
half of them have a one-hyperbar wagon pattern in quick four metre. It is rather
surprising that all of these short patterns are diﬀerent, because such shortpatterns become necessarily very similar, and it is probable that it worked
only because the composers were very careful to make them all diﬀerent. The
tendency towards simple wagon accompaniments can also be seen in somerevisions of older pieces that were made at that time, replacing longer patterns
by shorter ones.42
39

The dates that are given for Hoiku shōka generally refer to the handover to thecommissioner or to another act by the court music department that made the songs anoﬃcially approved part of the collection. That means that the composition was certainly
ﬁnished at that time, but it does not exclude the possibility of later revisions by thecomposer or another person of the department, either on demand of, or approved ex post
facto by, the department.
40
Since the number of times per beat and the number of beats per bar varies by
metre, but the length of a time is about the same in all metres, the length of songs can best
be compared if not bars or beats, but times are counted. A full performance of ‘Ō Shōkun’,as included in CD 6 of Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 6/31–35, takes almost 20 minutes.
41
Those poems that had been set to pre-existent melodies before the interruption in
mid-1880, were among those that were most often used for newly composed songs in 1882.
42
In ‘Kami no megumi’ [,‘The blessings of the deity’], poem by MOTOORINorinaga (1730–1801) by HAYASHI Hirotsugu (1845–1917), the four-hyperbar pattern inquick four metre, which has a simple ﬁrst half and a more complex second half, is,shortened to its ﬁrst half, which is now repeated twice as often. In ‘Omou dochi’ [‘Friends’], poem by TAIRA no Kanemori (d. 990) by the same composer, a quick-four-metre
song ten hyperbars in length, the ﬁve-hyperbar pattern is replaced by a two-hyperbar

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Nineteenth-Century Music Review

The songs of Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka, the last oﬃcial gagaku compositions in thenineteenth century, are generally similar to the latest Hoiku shōka: rather short andsimple and most of them in quick four metre. Concerning the accompaniment,
however, there is a great diﬀerence, since the composers decided to use the sameaccompaniments wherever possible. Essentially all short songs in quick four
metre are accompanied by the same one-hyperbar pattern. (This pattern is not
identical to any of the accompaniment patterns of Hoiku shōka.) The idea that thewagon accompaniment should give an individual colour to the piece seems not
yet sustained in Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka. As already mentioned, the use of an ostinato
that is common to all songs of a genre is characteristic for some traditional genresof Japanese court music. Restorationist tendencies were important for the gagaku
songs from the beginning, but in the late years it seems that they gained more
power.43 This may be due partly to the reaction against the Westernized musiceducation that had already begun, but also to the fact that Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka
was composed for the education of Shinto clergymen and not, as Hoiku shōka, forgeneral education.
The gagaku songs thus become longer until 1879 and then shorter again, but
the wagon accompaniments are longest in the beginning and shortest in the end.
While the early accompaniments have a strong signiﬁcance for the musical form,
the later patterns give mainly a colour and rhythmic eﬀect to the piece. In
Kōtenkōkyūsho shōka they ﬁnally lose their individuality and become a purely
formal element of the genre.
Analysis of Three Songs that Share an Accompaniment
The songs discussed below are shown in Figure 5.
‘Hana tachibana’ [, ‘Tachibana ﬂowers’]

The poem is a free adaptation of an English song text. The prose translation was
versiﬁed in the form 5 7–5 7–7 7, a tanka with an added seven-syllable clause:44
Satsuki tatsu / kewai mo shiruku / waga yado nohana tachibana wa / hokorobi ni keri / niwa mo kaorite
pattern, which is thus played not twice but ﬁve times. And in ‘Yukimeguri’ [, ‘On theway’], poem by FUJIWARA no Sanesuke (957–1046), composed by TōGI Takekata, a threehyperbar pattern in quick four metre was replaced by a one-bar pattern.
43
The Restorationist tendency is also obvious in the selection of the texts.
44
See also note 30. This scheme is also known as the form of bussokusekika], an archaic form of Buddhist lyric. There seems to be no connection between[
this archaic form and its modern use, however. ‘Hana tachibana’ was the ﬁrst song in
Hoiku shōka to use this form. The other songs in this form are dated between April and June
, ‘The Emperor’s blessings’], which is of unknown
1878, except ‘Kimi ga megumi’ [date. Most of the songs in this form are translated English songs or poems newly written atthat time; but two (like ‘Shirogane’ below) are classical tankas with an arbitrarily added
line. It is unknown why the compilers of the texts of Hoiku shōka felt so strong a need forthat form that they added words to famous classical poems. Nakayama (Meiji shōka no
tanjō, 33) also mentions this addition and suspects that the composers may have added thewords for musical reasons. But given the diverse musical structures of the various
examples in bussokusekika form this seems unlikely.

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Literal translation, clause by clause:
The ﬁfth month begins / the atmosphere is moist / and at our house
The tachibana ﬂowers / have bloomed / and the garden is fragrant45

The song is dated 22 February 1878 and was composed by YAMANOI Motokazu(1853–1908).46
A certain type of syllabic gagaku songs in quick four metre was alreadyestablished at the time ‘Hana tachibana’ was composed. In songs belonging tothis type every ﬁve- or seven-syllable text clause forms one phrase of one
hyperbar length, with no more than two syllables per beat. Five-syllable clauses
end with a long note that falls on the big time. Only the last text clause, consistingof seven syllables, is extended to two hyperbars, because seven syllables in one
hyperbar do not allow a melodic closing formula. A song entirely composed in thissimple style has thus one hyperbar more than the text has clauses.47
Although this syllabic style prevails in ‘Hana tachibana’, the fourth clause,‘hana tachibana wa’, extended to two phrases (bars 13–20), is an exception. In
fact, this exception was necessary to allow a wagon pattern of more than one
hyperbar length, as otherwise the song would have had a length of sevenhyperbars, which is a prime number. By augmenting the song to eight hyperbars
the composer makes a four-hyperbar wagon pattern possible. Incidentally, thecomposer makes a virtue of necessity, because by prolonging the note valuesin ‘hana tachibana wa’ he gives emphasis to the beautiful words that gave thesong its title.
In contrast to the other two songs, for ‘Hana tachibana’ we do not knowwhether the melody or the accompaniment was composed ﬁrst, or whether thetwo were composed together. The fact that both halves of the song are very
similar in bars 3–10 and 19–26 makes it probable that the composer either
composed the accompaniment ﬁrst or was at least aware that the two sections
would need a common accompaniment when he composed the melody.
The basic rhythm of the wagon accompaniment – tones on the ﬁrst and secondbeat and an arpeggio on the third beat – is very common in gagaku songs. The
accompaniment is thus divided into four sections. The ﬁrst section starts from the
key tone (kyū) and ends on the ﬁfth (chi), the second is an intensiﬁed repetition of
the ﬁrst section, the third section proceeds from the ﬁfth to the key tone, and thelast section conﬁrms the key tone.

45

The original English text, itself based on a German song, is as follows: ‘The May is
trav’ling hither, / The May is at the door, / The garden and the meadow / Will bloom again
all o’er.’ The ‘ﬁfth month’ in the lunar calendar is somewhat later than May and falls in theso-called ‘plum rain’ season. The source used by the Japanese translator is Adolph Douai,
The Kindergarten: A Manual for the Introduction of Froebel’s System of Primary Education into
Public Schools (New York: E. Steiger, 1871), or another edition of that book. The song isfound in German and English on pages 42–3. The prose translation contained in theJapanese edition of this book, SEKI Shinzō, trans., Yochienki, ed. by the Tōkyō Women’s
Normal School, 1877, volume 2, 62 (reprint in Meiji Hoiku Bunkenshū, 1977), was used forthe free adaptation. Seki’s prose translation omits the second stanza of the song.
46
Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 6/9.
47
See, for example, ‘Aki no hikage’ [, ‘Autumn shadows’] (text of unknown
origin), dated December 1877 and composed by SHIBA Fujitsune. The text in chōka form has
eleven clauses, and the song is twelve hyperbars long.

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The wagon plays almost in unison with the melody in bars 3–12. Since the ﬁrst
two bars of the accompaniment are not played in the beginning, the listener canrecognize good congruence between melody and accompaniment from the
beginning to the ﬁrst break in the melody. In bars 13–16, however, there is a great
discrepancy between melody and accompaniment, so that the conﬁrmation of thetonality in the accompaniment loses its eﬀect. This is important to maintain themusical tension. Thereafter, the complete congruence of melody and accompaniment in bars 17–20 has a very strong eﬀect. It is the expressive climax of the song.
The divergence between melody and accompaniment in bars 25–28 is importantto prepare the ﬁnal cadence. In bars 29–32, the wagon supports the melody, whichcloses with the formula that is most common in gagaku songs for a full cadence.48
In an analysis of a Western song one would perhaps describe the function of
melodic motives, as for example the movement B – D – E and its inversion A – F] –E, for the musical form, but that would be less appropriate for the analysis ofa gagaku song, since all melodic movements that are used in this song are
ubiquitous in gagaku songs and thus not characteristic of this particular song.
It is rather the relationship between accompaniment and melody – the change
between congruence and divergence – which creates the individual form of agagaku song.
‘Shirogane’ [, ‘Silver’]

The words of this song are as follows:
Shirogane mo / kogane49 mo tama mo / nani sen ni
masareru takara / ko ni shikame ya mo / utsukushiki ko ni

Translated clause by clause:
Silver / gold and jewels / what are they for?
The greatest treasure / can it be equal to a child / to a beautiful child?

The text was originally a tanka by YAMANOUE no Okura (660–733), but the lastclause was added by the compiler of Hoiku shōka (see note 44). The song is dated
9 April 1878, and was composed by SHIBA Fujitsune (1849–1918).50 Together with
‘Kiku no kazashi’51 it was the ﬁrst song in Hoiku shōka to re-use the wagon patternof another song.
Although through the addition of a seven-syllable clause the text acquired
exactly the same form as ‘Hana tachibana’, and it would thus be possible to sing
the words with the melody of ‘Hana tachibana’ by replacing the syllables one by48
The diﬀerence between G in the melody and F] in the accompaniment, in bar 30,
creates a strong dissonant eﬀect for European ears, but in gagaku the discrepancy between
these two tones is rather perceived as a diﬀerence of intonation than as a musical interval.
49
The original poem has ‘kugane’ instead of ‘kogane’. The poems in this article are
given as written in the sources of Hoiku shōka.
50
Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 6/10.
51‘Kiku no kazashi’ [, ‘Chrysanthemum decoration’], also dated 9 April 1878,
with a text of unknown origin, composed by Hayashi Hiromori, uses the wagon, ‘Oak leaves’], translated from an English song,accompaniment of ‘Hahasoba’ [composed by Ue Sanetake (1825–1895). See Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 6/12.

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one, Shiba has chosen to make the song four hyperbars longer, and, except for theﬁrst clause,52 he does not use the simple syllabic style we have seen in ‘Hana
tachibana’.
The concept of melodic and tonal cadences in ‘Shirogane’ is similar to that in‘Hana tachibana’, since Shiba sets melodic cadences congruent to the wagon
accompaniment in the third hyperbars of the ﬁrst and second wagon cycle (bars
9–12 and 25–28), but divergent melodic movements in the following hyperbars.
Since the second cadence in bars 25–28 is not congruent to a text clause ending, itis the weakest cadence of all, and does not entirely break the tension towards theclimax of the song. In the last sixteen bars of the song, the composer sets two
exceptionally long phrases. The last phrase begins and ends in congruence withthe accompaniment.
Exceptional in this song is also the use of the voice registers for the expressionof the words. The parts of the song that belong to the disesteemed silver, gold
and jewels use mainly the lower register, and the parts belonging to the highly
esteemed child use ﬁrstly the middle and then the high register. The use of theupper mordent tsuku on the high tones gives an additional emphasis. An
expressive highlighting of whole phrases is exceptional in Hoiku shōka.
Although ‘Hana tachibana’ and ‘Shirogane’ share some very similar passages(bars 6–15 of the former, for example, are almost identical with bars 22–31 of thelatter), the overall impression of the two songs is very diﬀerent, and it can be said
that the experiment of composing a new song to the old accompaniment has
worked well in this case.
‘Kashima no kami’
The poem is a tanka by ŌTONERI no Chifumi (eighth century):Arare furu53 / Kashima no kami o / inoritsutsu
sumera mikusani / ware wa kinishi oTranslated clause by clause:
To [hailing]54 / Kashima’s deity / praying
As a warrior of the Emperor / I came!

The song was composed by TōGI Takekata (1855–?) and is dated August 1878.55‘Kashima no kami’ is the most melismatic of the three songs analysed here, withthe same length as ‘Shirogane’, but only ﬁve text clauses. In bars 25–38, a
principle of text distribution is observed that is more common for slow metres:
each syllable has the length of two times. As is often the case in passages that
follow this principle, the phrasing becomes independent of the musical metre, sothat after bar 25 the caesuras are incongruent with the hyperbars.

52
Often in Hoiku shōka the ﬁrst ﬁve-syllable clause, which is sung solo, is composedin the simple syllabic style, even if that style is not used in any other part of the song.
53
The original poem has ‘furi’, but the sources of Hoiku shōka write ‘furu’.
54‘Arare furu’ [‘hail is falling’] is a makurakotoba belonging to the name ‘Kashima’. So
the use of the expression in this poem does not necessarily mean that it hailed at that time.
55
Kindai shōka shūsei, CD 6/11.

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The composer uses many melody fragments from ‘Hana tachibana’ as well as‘Shirogane’. Bars 9–16, for example, are a transposition of bars 41–48 of‘Shirogane’, bars 17–24 are almost identical to bars 1–8 of ‘Hana tachibana’, andthe ending is the same as in ‘Shirogane’. Nevertheless, the formal concept of‘Kashima no kami’ is very diﬀerent from both other songs.
The diﬀerence is most obvious if we look at the melodic cadences on the key
tone in the three songs. As described in the above analyses, the two previous
songs make use of the two cadences of the wagon pattern and synchronize theinterim cadences (bars 9–12 in ‘Hana tachibana’ and bars 9–12 and 25–28 in‘Shirogane’) with the ﬁrst, and the ﬁnal cadence with the second. Furthermore,
the interim cadences use the weaker formula of simple movement down to the
key tone, and only the ﬁnal cadence uses the strong formula of movement a step
down from and then back to the key tone. So there is a clear distinction between‘half’ and ‘full’ melodic cadences. In ‘Kashima no kami’, in contrast, there arethree strong melodic cadences (in bars 13–16 and 27–30 and the ﬁnal cadence),
and none of them is congruent to the ﬁrst cadence of the wagon.
The ﬁrst 16 bars of ‘Kashima no kami’ are a musically closed section,
symmetrically divided in a two-hyperbar solo and a two-hyperbar tutti. The
former is further divided in two phrases, both closing with the key note, and thelatter closes with a full cadence, congruent to the ﬁnal cadence of the wagon
pattern. The tension at this point is maintained only by the text, since the musicalcadence falls in the middle of a text clause. (The clause endings are indicated byslashes in the transnotation. In the original notation, the clause endings areindicated by small circles between the text syllables.)The ﬁve- and seven-syllable clauses are important for the structure of gagaku
songs. As it can be observed in ‘Hana tachibana’ and ‘Shirogane’, a phrase can be
identical with a text clause, but a text clause can also be divided into several
phrases. However, a phrase does not extend beyond the end of a text clause.56
That means that even if a clause is divided into several phrases, the end of theclause conveys a certain feeling of completion, and if a melodic and tonal cadence
falls in the middle of a text clause, its closing function is reduced. In ‘Shirogane’
the diﬀerence between the ﬁrst cadence (bars 9–12), which marks a clauseending, and the second one (bars 25–28), which falls in the middle of a clause,
contributes to the consequent lead-up to the climax.
In ‘Kashima no kami’, where strong melodic cadences break the ﬂow of the
melody twice, it is very important that they are not congruent to the clausestructure of the text. The second cadence (bars 27–30) is even ‘out of phase’ withthe rhythm of the wagon. The strong rhythmic dissonance motivates the melodic
climax in the last two text clauses, and it is not resolved until the very last phrase.
It thus seems that the composer intentionally followed a very strict concept ofrhythmic symmetry in the beginning – rather unusual for a gagaku song – tomake the rhythmic dissonance in the second half more eﬀective.
Conclusion
As seen in the three short examples, musical analysis of gagaku songs can reveal
structural diﬀerences between particular songs and show aesthetic qualities ofindividual pieces. For such an analysis, however, it is necessary to know the56

There are very few exceptions of this rule, and some of them are spurious.

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constraints and conditions under which the process of composition operated.
While the melodic shape of the gagaku songs shows almost no individuality, andthe formal structures are rigidly regulated by collective processes, the interplay
between the diverse rhythmic, tonal and melodic elements, namely the text
clause structure, the rhythmic and tonal shape of the wagon accompaniment andthe phrases and cadences of the melody, shows a great variety of individual
solutions. Musical tension is produced and resolved mainly by incongruence andcongruence between these elements. Since the clause structure is essentiallyasymmetrical, and the musical structures are symmetrical, the composer wasforced to search for solutions to bring these elements together.
There remain a great number of unresolved questions: Which of the structuralfeatures shown in our analysis are generally used or widespread in gagaku songs,
which are restricted to a certain period or certain composers, and which are
speciﬁc to one or a few songs? Which compositional techniques are learnt fromtraditional music genres, especially traditional gagaku, or from the reception of
non-traditional music, and which techniques are newly developed? Did theindividual musical structure of certain gagaku songs have any direct inﬂuence onlater gagaku songs or on compositions beyond that genre? Are there related
techniques in pieces of other music genres around the same time?
Melodic, rhythmic and harmonic57 congruence and incongruence between
voice and instrument seem to be of general importance for the composition ofgagaku songs. Although the speciﬁc usage of ostinatos seen in gagaku songs is notfound in other genres of modern Japanese music (not even in many of the songs
that belong to the gagaku song genre in a wider sense), congruence andincongruence as a general principle is also a valid concept for many other genresof Japanese music and the music of other Asian cultures. In a certain sense, thisprinciple is the ‘heterophonic’ equivalent to consonance and dissonance inpolyphonic or homophonic music.
Obviously, it is tempting to ﬁnd here an ‘Asian’ approach to composition that isfundamentally opposed to the Western approach. This fundamental opposition,
however, would not long stand in a broader investigation of the modernization
process in Japanese music. Just as it is questionable whether the music of Debussy
or Scriabin can be subsumed under the Western concepts of polyphony andhomophony, in a majority of modern Japanese compositions, whether they
emerged from a traditional or a Western background, it is diﬃcult to draw adeﬁnite line between polyphonic and heterophonic techniques. The very
temptation to draw such a line reﬂects our tendency to fall back on the binary
opposition of ‘Western’ modernity and ‘Asian’ tradition, and thus to neglectmodernization in traditional culture. Although consciousness of tradition anddemarcation against the ‘other’ is also a phenomenon of modernity, the question ofwhether heterophonic or polyphonic techniques are used is, at least aesthetically,
less interesting than the question of how they are used. Focusing on this last
question we will not have ‘one’ heterophony and ‘one’ polyphony, but a ﬁeld witha great variety of possibilities. And the composer creating within this ﬁeld will notappear primarily as an ideologist belonging to a certain school or stylistic
tendency, but as an individual working on real solutions for real problems.

57‘Harmonic’ not in the Western sense, but only in the broadest sense, as shown in
our analyses: whether the full and half cadences of the melody and the accompanimentcoincide or not.

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To come back to our three songs, we do not know why the court musicians at
a certain moment decided to compose songs with a shared accompaniment andwhy they later abandoned this practice, but the existing examples are especiallyinteresting for musical analysis, since it is clear that these songs have a very closeintertextual relationship. In a situation where very similar melodies would havebeen the most obvious solution, the two composers who added their composition
to the ﬁrst one apparently struggled to ﬁnd clearly distinctive musical structures.
The use of the same accompaniment for all three thus does not reﬂect a lack of
independent originality, but was a measure to perform the diﬀerence more
visibly, and it is almost impossible to imagine that this diﬀerence came aboutother than by a conscious act of will.
Without question the history of gagaku songs – though short – can be written
as a story of solving compositional problems, and the resulting musicalstructures are interesting documents of musical creativity shortly after the Meiji
Restoration.
I thank Professor Tom Gally from the Department of Language and Information
Sciences of the University of Tokyo for the careful review of my manuscript.