67

European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural
Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent
in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Margaret MEHL*

Abstract
The fact that much of what the Japanese regard as part of their culture originally came to Japan from the Asian continent in ancient and medieval times
is well known and has been extensively researched. For the period after
1868, however, the attention of scholars has tended to concentrate on Japan’s
comprehensive importation of Western civilization.
This exploratory article suggests a different perspective. Taking music inmodern Japan as an example and based in part on the author’s research for
her recent book Not by Love Alone: The Violin in Japan, 1850 2010, theauthor will argue that music is a particularly rewarding field for examining
transnational flows. Research on music in modern Japan has tended to privilege the introduction of European art music from the West and this wasundoubtedly one of the most important developments in the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries. There are, however, aspects to this development thatmerit more attention than they have received so far, including the relationshipbetween Western music and other musics practised in Japan in the nineteenth
century and the interactions between Japan and non-Western countries and inparticular its East Asian neighbours. In this article, four general themes forfurther enquiry are introduced: 1. The possible relation between Meiji statesmen’s and intellectuals’ kangaku education and their views on the role ofmusic in the modern state. 2. The Chinese origins and the place ofminshingaku (Ming and Qing music) in the musical culture of nineteenthcentury Japan. 3. Japan’s role in the dissemination of Western Music in East
Asia. 4. The role of the East Asian continent (particularly the cities of
Shanghai and Harbin) as a place of encounter between Asia and Europe.
Key-words: music, East Asia, Japan, Korea, China, transnational flows,
globalization* Margaret Mehl is an Associate Professor Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional
Studies, University of Copenhagen

68

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016

1. Introduction
It can be argued that music lends itself to globalization more than manyother areas of cultural activity and expression.1 Certainly, musicians in manysocieties have long been and still are characterized by their mobility. The
nature of European art music with its heavy reliance on the faithful renditionof a composition through a written score means that it is especially suitable
for transmission across cultures. As long as the musicians have received therelevant training, their rendition of a work from the Western canon will soundso similar that even the most discerning expert will rarely be able to say withcertainty whether the performers are European or Asian.2
Nevertheless, music has so far not featured prominently in general worksof history, not even in newer ones informed by the increased interest intransnational cultural flows. For example, in a recent study of East Asia underJapanese colonial dominance entitled In Transit: The Formation of theColonial East Asian Cultural Sphere, the author, Faye Yuan Kleeman,
discusses the relationship between colonialism and modernity, including therole of cities, movements of people, technology and media. Although dance istreated, music only receives a brief passing mention.3 It seems that Bruno
Nettl, one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology, still has a point with his claimthat not only are American and Western European university professors in all
fields particularly ethnocentric about music, but “they claim that music isdifficult to understand and draw a sharp line between ‘musicians’ andothers.”4 The same point is made by the musician and neuroscientist Daniel
Levitin, who speaks of a “chasm between musical experts and everyday
musicians that has grown so wide in our culture (...), and for some reason thisis uniquely so with music.” Levitin adds that this phenomenon seems to be
specific to contemporary Western society.5 In recent years some scholars have
1 Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19.
Jahrhunderts (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2009), 26 30; —, “Globale Horizonte
europäischer Kunstmusik, 1860 1930,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 38.1 (2012): 86
132, 86 87. The German historian Jürgen Osterhammel includes in the firstchapter of his global history of the nineteenth century a brief section on (European)
opera.
2 Osterhammel, “Globale Horizonte europäischer Kunstmusik, 1860 1930,” 86.
Osterhammel asserts that music needs no translation; however, he also admits that
not all music is comprehensible to everyone, so the assertion might be debatable.
3 Faye Yuan Kleeman, In Transit: The Formation of the Colonial East Asian Cultural
Sphere (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014), 8.
4 Bruno Nettl, Encounters in Ethnomusicology: A Memoir (Warren, Michigan:
Harmonie Park Press, 2002), 64.
5 Daniel Levitin, This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession(London: Atlantic, 2008 (2006)), 194. One might ask to what extent this is also trueof non-Western societies, but for Japan at least, it does appears to be so: together

European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 69

attempted to bridge the divide between “musical experts” and scholars ofother disciplines but there is still some way to go.6
The history of music in modern Japan has most often been studied as thehistory of Japan’s successful adoption of Western music. This was, of course,
an important development, as is demonstrated by the position of Japanesemusicians on the stages of the world, the world-wide fame of the Suzuki
Method of musical pedagogy and the equally world-wide dissemination ofJapanese-produced musical instruments and sound technology. An exclusive
focus on this bilateral, one-way relationship, however, obscures the wider
picture of interactions and flows in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. One aspect that has been almost completely neglected in Western scholarship and received very limited attention even by Japanese scholars is theintroduction into Japan of so-called minshingaku (Ming and Qing music) from
China at around the same time as the nineteenth-century reception of Westernmusic.7 Another is the significance of Japan’s interaction with the East Asian
continent. Japan acted as a mediator of Western culture on the continent.
Meanwhile, the Asian continent, particularly the cities of Harbin andShanghai, represented space where East Asian and European culture met andfrom where Western, particularly Russian musicians brought their music toJapan. I became interested in this topic while I was working on my recent
book, Not by Love Alone: The Violin in Japan, 1850-2010.8
The following sections address questions of music-related cultural flows
between Japan and the East Asian mainland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which I became aware of in the course of my research. They
are to be understood as a basis for future research rather than a report ofresearch already completed.

with Western classical music the Japanese have adopted many stereotypical assumptions that this music has given rise to.
6 Two examples of edited volumes that can be understood as programmatic statements
are Stanley C. Pelkey, “Music, Memory, and the People in Selected British
Periodicals of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries,” in Music andHistory: Bridging the Disciplines, ed. Jackson, Jeffrey H. and Pelkey, Stanley C.
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010 (2005)); Jane F. Fulcher, ed. The
Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011).
7 The most notable exception is Yasuko Tsukahara, Jūkyū seiki no Nihon ni okeru Seiyō
ongaku no juyō (Tokyo: Taka Shuppan, 1993).
8 Margaret Mehl, Not by Love Alone: The Violin in Japan, 1850 2010 (Copenhagen:
The Sound Book Press, 2014).

70

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016

2. Music and government: Did their kangaku education colour
Japanese statesmen’s and intellectuals’ views on the function ofmusic?
Until the Meiji government embarked on a course of modernization
modelled on Western countries, China had for centuries held a dominant
place in the world view of Japanese intellectuals and statesmen. Indeed, theMeiji Restoration did not put an end to this over night. It has even been
described as “Japan’s attempt to inherit China.” 9 Most of the actors in the
Restoration and the reforms that followed had been educated in the traditionof kangaku (Chinese Learning) and schools providing kangaku education
continued to play a significant role at least until the 1890s.10 Did their
kangaku education and their knowledge of the Chinese classics influence theprincipal actors in the introduction of Western music?
The Five Classics were (at least nominally) part of the curriculum in theprivate academies of Chinese learning (kangaku) in Meiji period, reflecting
continuity from the previous era.11 They include the Book of Rites, part ofwhich deals with music. Not much needs to be said about its contents here,
except to point out that music, together with rites, laws and punishment, wasregarded as an indispensable part of good government, and that music is
associated with heaven, with harmony, joy, similarity and unity (in contrast to
rites, which are associated with distinction and separation), with the spiritualand human affections and with order, including the regulation of physicalmovement.12 The role of music in society was also discussed by Japanese
Confucian scholars in the Edo period,13 suggesting that music was regarded
as a significant area for political reform.
And when Kume Kunitake (1839 1931), in his account of the Iwakura
Embassy, reports on singing in schools, he makes direct reference to China,
as he does in other parts of the work:
9 Ben-Ami Shillony, “The Meiji Restoration: Japan’s attempt to inherit China,” in War,
Revolution & Japan, ed. Neary, Ian (Sandgate, Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library,1993).
10 Margaret Mehl, “Chinese Learning (kangaku) in Meiji Japan,” History 85. (2000):
48 66; —, Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meijji Japan: The Decline
and Transformation of the Kangaku Juku (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2003).
11 Mehl, Private Academies of Chinese Learning in Meijji Japan: The Decline andTransformation of the Kangaku Juku, 128 135.
12 Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai, eds., Li Chi (Book of Rites): An Encyclopedia of Ancient
Ceremonial Usages, Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions, translated by James
Legge, 2 vols., vol. 2 (New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1967).
13 See, for example, Demin Tao, “Tominaga Nakamoto no Ongakukan: ‘Gakuritsukō’
no kenkyū,” in Nihon kangaku shisōshi ronkō: Sorai, Nakamoto oyobi kindai (Suita:
Kansai Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1999).

European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 71“Singing is taught every day in elementary schools. Through singing,students praise the divine, and it brings harmony to their heart. The
piano accompaniment instils rhythm and timing into their dance-steps.
Both boys and girls study singing, which stimulates and attunes theemotions. This corresponds in meaning to the appointment of the official
K’uei Tzŭ as director of music by the legendary Emperor Shun so thatspirits and men would be brought into harmony.”14
Nevertheless, accounts of key actors in the introduction of Western music,
such as Isawa Shūji (1851 1917), tend to gloss over their kangaku education,
while going into great detail about their encounter with Western learning.
Isawa received his early education in kangaku at Shintokukan in Takatō
domain in the 1860s. According to one of his biographers he had studied theFour Books and Five Classics of the Confucian canon by the time he wastwelve or thirteen.15 Most research about him stresses his Western education,
but a closer examination of his kangaku training may well shed more light on
his ideas about music and moral education.16 Even superficial reading of theBook of Rites suggests that the concepts associated with music could easily beconstrued not only as compatible with what the Meiji leaders would haveobserved about music in the West but even as preparing the ground for theirlater efforts to actively appropriate Western music for nation-building. One
might, of course, argue, that the usefulness of Western music for this purpose
was obvious in the visible (not to mention audible) displays of power by
military bands or the effects of school children singing together, or that
Isawa’s training in Western arts and sciences was more significant for histhought and actions than his kangaku background.
But what about vast majority of Japanese actors at the lower levels ofsociety who had minimal or no experience of foreign travel and very limited
training in Western learning? Some of these nevertheless became pioneers of
14 Kunitake Kume, The Iwakura Embassy 1871 73: A True Account of the Ambassador
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary’s Journey of Observation through the UnitedStates of America and Europe. ed. Graham Healey and Tsuzuki, Chushichi, trans.
Martin Colcutt, Graham Healey, Andrew Cobbing, P.F.Kornicky, Eugene Soviak,
Chushichi Tsuzuki, 5 vols., vol.1: The United States of America (Kamiyakiri,
Matsudo, Chiba: The Japan Documents, 2002), 75.
15 Hachirō Kaminuma, Isawa Shūji, Jinbutsu sōsho (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan,1962), 17. A recent, otherwise excellent work about Isawa’s role in the modernization of Japan, while mentioning his kangaku education, does not discuss its possible
significance for Isawas thought about music and the state: Yasuto Okunaka, Kokka
to ongaku: Isawa Shūji ga mezashita Nihon kindaika (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 2008), 90,
195.
16 A subject which Okunaka in his otherwise excellent biography of Isawa does notdiscuss: Okunaka, Kokka to ongaku: Isawa Shūji ga mezashita Nihon kindaika.

72

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016

Western-influenced modernization, at least at the regional and local level.
What was it in their background that enabled them to play such a role? Take
the example of Shikama, Totsuji 四竈訥治（訥堂）(1853 1928), and his
brother Jinji 四竈仁爾（静堂）(1863 1941). Both were important pioneers ofWestern music; Jinji as an educator in the provincial town of Sendai, Totsuji
nationally (as well as locally) as the editor of the first magazine dedicated tomusic, Ongaku zasshi (subtitled, “The Musical Magazine”). It may well besignificant that, although they had limited training in music (Western orotherwise), both were highly educated in kangaku, as was usual for men fromthe samurai class, and were highly regarded for their literary and calligraphic
talents. There is reason to believe that the Shikamas, like others of their class,
had little difficulty in integrating the new knowledge about music into the
traditional system of thought they had been trained in.17

3. Music from China in modern Japan: The rise and fall of minshingaku
The tendencies observed in research on music in modern Japan describedabove mean that we rarely appreciate the sheer variety of music practised in
Meiji Japan. One eloquent testimony to this is the magazine Ongaku zasshi,
published by Shikama Totsuji from September 1890 until May 1896.18
Ongaku zasshi included many articles and reports on traditional as well as
Western musics. Most remarkably (from today’s vantage point), it included
articles about minshingaku (Ming and Qing music). Minshingaku was widely
enjoyed until the time of the Sino-Japanese war, after which it never quite
regained its previous place in musical life, although it did not disappear
entirely.
Although described in one word, Ming and Qing musics were actually
distinct from each other and the period and actors of transmission differed,even if the distinctions blurred over time. Both came to Japan via Nagasaki
17 Here Suzuki Sadami’s “receptor methodology” approach might be relevant. Likewise,
Hosokawa Shūhei states that Meiji intellectuals were not aware of the epistemological gap between the Western and indigenous concepts of music: Sadami Suzuki,“A Reevalutation of the East Asian Modern System of Knowledge,” in Cultural
Interaction Studies in East Asia: New Methods and Perspectives, ed. Tao, Deminand Fujita, Takao (Osaka: Institute for Cultural Interaction Studies, Kansai
University, 2012), 211; Shuhei Hosokawa, “Ongaku, Onkyō/Music, Sound,” inWorking Words: New Approaches to Japanese Studies (Center for Japanese Studies,
UC Berkeley, 2012), 3. The Shikamas are the subject of a article prepared by theauthor, entitled, “Between the Global, the National and the Local in Japan: Two
Musical Pioneers from Sendai” for the journal Itinerario.
18 Publication continued until 1898. For a brief description of Japanese music periodicals in English, see Setsuko Mori, “A Historical Survey of Music Periodicals inJapan: 1881 1920,” Fontis Artis Musicae 36.1 (1989): 44 50.

European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 73

in the Edo period. Ming music first came to Japan in the seventeenth century,
Qing music in the early nineteenth. Most of the music that became popular inJapan was shingaku, that is, Qing music.19 Such research, as has been
published on the music, has tended to concentrate on its dissemination andpopularity in Meiji Japan, rather than on its origins in China. It seems that it
originated in a new type of popular song in late Ming and Qing China, thatwas different from folk songs in that they combined elements from both“refined” (Jap. ga) and “vulgar” (Jap. zoku) and were enjoyed by all classesof society, which may well have made them peculiarly suited to the changing
values and increasingly fluid society of the late Edo and early Meiji periods.20 Minshingaku became hugely popular in the Meiji period, at around thesame time as Western music was systematically introduced.21 Its early practitioners were Japanese literati (bunjin), who enjoyed it, together with Chinesecalligraphy and poetry at social gatherings. Clara Whitney, who came to
Japan with her family in 1875, describes a “tea party” in the residence ofMatsudaira Sadaaki (1859 1908), the former lord of Kuwana (Mie prefecture)in her diary, where “Chinese musical instruments” were played: gekkin (around plucked lute with frets), fue (a type of flute), kokin, teikin and keikin(violin-like bowed instruments), clappers and a mokkin (a xylophone-like
instrument).22 Minshingaku could also be heard at public concerts (an innovation derived from the West), which regularly featured a mixture of musicalgenres.23 The minshingaku repertoire consisted of 349 different pieces, mostof them first published before 1877. The publication of sheet music peaked
from around 1877 to the mid-1890s.24 Shikama Totsuji himself published a
19 This and the following is based on Kuei-Hsiang Yang, “Minshingaku: Nagasaki nitsutaerareta Chūgoku ongaku,” Ochanomizu Joshi Daigaku Daigakuin Ningen Bunka
Kenkyūka (Journal of the Musicological Society of Ochanomizu University) 2.
(2000): 70 80; Chunli Piao, “Nagasaki no minshingaku to Chūgoku no minshinjichō shōkyoku kenkyū,” Chūkyō Daigaku Bunka Kagaku Kenkyūsho/Fukuoka
Daigaku Jinbun Gakubu (Cultural Science) 17.2 (2006): 48 22 (!). For a discussionof Minshingaku in English, see William P. Malm, “Chinese Music in the Edo andMeiji Periods in Japan,” Asian Music 6 1/2 (1975): 147 172.
20 Piao, “Nagasaki no minshingaku to Chūgoku no minshin jichō shōkyoku kenkyū,”47, 26. This is mere speculation, but it may well be worth investigating whether
there is a connection between intellectual discussions about music and social classin this period and the popularity of minshingaku.
21 Most of what follows is based on Tsukahara, Seiyō ongaku no juyō, 265 313. Her
work about the introduction of Western music includes an extensive treatment ofminshingaku.
22 Clara Whitney, Clara’s Diary: An American Girl in Meiji Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha
International, 1981), 171 175.
23 Tsukahara, Seiyō ongaku no juyō, 291 291. Ongaku zasshi and its successors regularly
included concert programmes.
24 Ibid., 300 307. Different notation systems, Chinese derived or Western, were used:

74

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016

tutor for shingaku (Qing music) in 1891.25 From the late 1880s the publishedpieces tended to be of Japanese rather than Chinese origin: traditional popular
music (zokukyoku) and modern songs (shōka and gunka).
Unlike Western music, which was imported as part of the Meiji government’s modernization package and featured at national events and diplomatic
ceremonies almost from the beginning, minshingaku had no such official role.
Rather, it occupied a similar place to most genres of traditional Japanesemusic, which although widely practised and enjoyed by the people, waslargely ignored by the government. Once the literati who were the initialpractitioners and supporters of minshingaku lost their dominance to Westerneducation, which was increasingly widespread, the music had no significant
network to support it. Moreover, in Meiji Japan minshingaku received nofurther stimulus from China and did not feature in exchanges between
Japanese and Chinese literati; perhaps because it was too different from thekind of music the latter enjoyed.26
Even so, and although minshingaku suffered a steep decline in popularity
with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1894 and never recovered its
previous popularity, sheet music was still published after 1895 and a hereditary line of teachers in Osaka continued until 1940.27
The example of minshingaku shows, among other things, that the fate ofa given type of music is intertwined with developments in society in general.
Just as the international order in East Asia changed from a Sinocentric one to
one dominated by Western imperialism and Japan increasingly looked to theWest rather than to China as a model, so did Western music come to be
dominant music, both because it was supported by the state and (closely
related to this) because it was widely perceived as modern.
However, developments in the field of music and of cultural relations
between countries in general do not necessarily directly reflect the political
relations between countries. Fruitful cultural exchanges can happen between
nations even when political relations are problematic, as the following cases
examples in Malm, “Chinese Music in the Edo and Meiji Periods in Japan.”
However, it is not clear to what extent transmission relied on sheet music: Yang’s
research suggests that direct transmission from teacher to pupil was more significant.
25 Totsuji Shikama, Shingaku dokushū no tomo (Tokyo: Kyōeki Shōsha, 1891). He is
also reported to have published a collection sheet music for the gekkin (“moon lute”,
a round plucked lute with frets which was very popular in the early Meiji period) as
early as 1881, although I have not yet been able to verify this.
26 According to Tsukahara, the Chinese origins of minshingaku are unclear, but appear
to have been in Chinese folk music (zokugaku): Tsukahara, Seiyō ongaku no juyō,
313.
27 Ibid., 293 296.

European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 75

show.

4. Japan and the Dissemination of Western Music in East Asia:
Destination for Study Abroad and Colonial PowerIn all three countries, Japan, Korea and China, Western music represented
a significant element in the modernization package when they attempted to
introduce comprehensive reforms in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Japan can be described as an “extreme” example of what happened not onlyin East Asia, but in other parts of the world: the Japanese made Westernmusic their own within the short space of a few decades while indigenousmusic was increasingly marginalized.28 The successful centralization of political power after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 paved the way for the establishment of a centralized education system with compulsory education for all
and a conscript army. I highlight just these two reform measures because of
their importance for the reception of Western music. Japan became a modelfor other non-Western countries seeking to modernize following Westernexample.
After the Sino-Japanese war, Chinese students flocked to Japan to study.
Among those who studied music was the pianist Xiao Youmei, born in 1884
and known as, “the father of music education in modern China.”29 In 1901,
at the age of just sixteen, he went to Tokyo where he studied at the Tokyo
Academy of Music (Tōkyō Ongaku Gakkō) and later at Tokyo Imperial
University. He returned to China in 1909. Three years later, in 1912 he travelled to Germany where he studied music in Leipzig and Berlin, just as many
Japanese students did. It seems safe to say, however, that the foundations of
his musical training were laid in Japan. While Xiao Youmei studied at thestate-sponsored Tokyo Academy of Music, many more studied at private
colleges. One of the earliest was the Music College of the East (Tōyō
Ongaku Gakkō), founded in 1907 by Suzuki Yonejirō (1868 1940). Just
before founding the college, Suzuki had travelled to China to study the stateof education there. Even before opening his college, Suzuki taught Chinese
students music at the hall of residence for Chinese students opened in Kanda
in 1902. The students had their own music society, established in 1904.
Suzuki opened his new college in the same neighbourhood.30 While the28 “Extremfall”: Osterhammel, “Globale Horizonte europäischer Kunstmusik, 1860
1930.”
29 Heinrich Geiger, Erblühende Zweige: Westliche klassische Musik in China (Mainz:
Schott, 2009), 36 38. See also Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai, Rhapsody in Red:
How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (New York: Algora, 2004).
30 Midori Takeishi, ed. Ongaku kyōiku no ishizue: Suzuki Yonejirō to Tōyō Ongaku
Gakkō (Tokyo: Shunjusha, 2007), 77 89.

76

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016

number of Chinese students who specialized in music may have been small,significantly more studied music as part of a teacher training course. Waseda
University, for example, opened a teacher training department for Chinese
students in 1905, and shōka (singing as taught in schools) was one of thesubjects taught; the same was true of the (accelerated) teacher training
department of the private girls’ school Jissen Jogakkō.31
In Korea, efforts to modernize the country were made in the years
following the enforced opening of the country in 1876. In 1901, the German
Franz Eckert was appointed to teach military music at the Korean court.
Eckert worked in Korea for 15 years until his death in 1916.32 He had previously taught Western music in Japan for 20 years, from 1879 to 1899, and his
experience must have helped him in Korea, especially given that during histime in Korea, the country first became a Japanese protectorate in 1905 andthen a colony in 1910. The colonial government introduced singing into theschool curriculum and Korean schoolchildren learnt songs from Japanese
schoolteachers. In 1925 a music department was established at the Ewha (orIwha) College for women in Seoul. Japanese merchants sold instruments. The
violin in particular, portable and relatively cheap, fascinated the Koreans noless than the Japanese. Wandering peddlers played simple tunes on it toattract potential customers. The Korean-born Japanese luthier Chin Shōgen(1929 2012) remembered hearing and seeing a violin for the first time in thehands of a wandering medicine vendor visiting his home village.33 He also
recalled a Japanese school teacher who played the violin. Chin later studied
violin-making in Japan. In Taiwan too, the Japanese colonizers played asignificant part the introduction of Western music.34 When these countries
regained their independence after the Second World War, they continued toassimilate European art music, for much the same reasons as the Japanese,and today Koreans and Chinese from Taiwan or mainland China vie with theJapanese on the international music scene.

5. Shanghai and Harbin: Mediators between Europe and Asia
So far I have presented examples of Chinese and Koreans being introduced
31 Hiroshi Abe, Chūgoku no kindai kyōiku to Meiji Nihon (Tokyo: Fukumura Shuppan,
1990), 86,100.
32 Hermann Gottschewski and Kyungboon Lee, “Franz Eckert und, seine’
Nationalhymnen. Eine Einführung,” OAG Notizen 12 (2013): 27 30.
33 Shōgen Chin, Kaikyō o wataru baiorin (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 2007), 56 79. Hio-Jin
Kim, Koreanische und westliche Musikerausbildung: Historische Rekonstruktion Vergleich - Perspektiven - (Marburg: Tectum, 2000), 132 139.
34 Angela Hao-Chun Lee, “The Influence of Governmental Control and early ChristianMissionaries on Music Education of Aborigines in Taiwan,” British Journal of Music
Education 23.2 (2006): 205 216.

European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 77

to Western music via Japan. But Japan, owes much of its success in assimilating Western music to impulses from the Asian continent. The rise of thesymphony orchestra and the general rise in standards of music-making after
the First World War can hardly be imagined without them. The cities ofHarbin and Shanghai in particular with their significant foreign populations
played a major role as sites of encounter and cultural interaction both
between East Asia and Europe and within East Asia.
Harbin, sometimes known as the “St. Petersburg of the East,” had adistinctly Russian flavour as a result of the Russian treaty with China in
1896, which secured Russia a concession to build and operate a railway innortheast China. Russians in search of work and a living had settled there.
After 1917 they were joined by Russian Jews and White Russians fleeing
from the revolution, and by 1922 about a quarter of the population were
Russians. Harbin had its own music academy and symphony orchestra.35
Shanghai too, with its foreign settlement, experienced an increase in its
Russian population and these Russian refugees gave a considerable boost to
the city’s musical life both as musicians and as audience. In 1919 the Italian
conductor Mario Paci gave his first concert as the conductor of the Shanghai
Municipal Council Public Band (founded in 1879), which under his leadership became a full symphony orchestra. This, the Shanghai Municipal
Orchestra, has been described as the first permanent professional orchestra in
East Asia, although it has to be said that it had hardly any Asian members
and its audience, at least initially, consisted mainly of foreign expatriates. The
Russian musicians in China played a large role in the growth of thesymphony orchestra in Japan. In 1925, two pioneers of the symphonyorchestra in Japan, the composers and conductors Yamada Kōsaku (18861965) and Konoe Hidemaro (1898 1973) succeeded in inviting over 30
Russian musicians for a well-publicized joint concert tour with Japanesemusicians.
The so-called Japan–Russia Joint Symphony Orchestra gave several
performances in Tokyo before continuing to Shizuoka, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osakaand Kobe.36 Most of the 33 Russian musicians were members of thesymphony orchestra in Harbin. The first and second concertmasters were
Josef König (1875 1932) and Nikolai Schifferblatt (1887 1936). They subsequently returned to Japan to become the first foreign conductors of the
newly-founded New Symphony Orchestra, the forerunner of the NHK (Japan
35 Melvin and Cai, Rhapsody in Red; Yasuko Enomoto, Shanhai ōkesutora monogatari:Seiyōjin ongakukatachi no yume (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 2006).
36 Details in Yūichi Iwano, Ōdō rakudo no kōkyōgaku: Manshū - shirazaru ongakushi(Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha, 1999), 46 52.

78

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016

Broadcasting Association) Orchestra.37 The concerts of the Japan–Russia Joint
Symphony Orchestra caused a sensation; never before had orchestral music
performed to such a high standard been heard in Japan.
Fourteen years later, in March 1939, the Harbin Symphony Orchestra
toured Japan under its conductor Sergei Schvaikovsky. The concertmaster was
Vladimir Trachtenberg, who had also played first violin in 1925. Many of theother members, however, had fled to Shanghai after the Japanese invasion ofManchuria. The ranks had been filled by Jewish refugees from Europe andeven by Japanese (two of whom came on the tour), but the orchestra’s
heyday had passed. The tour was advertised as “Japan–Manchukuo Defence
Against Communism Friendship Artistic Mission.” The orchestras made abroadcast and gave six concerts in Tokyo before continuing to Nagoya,
Osaka, Hakata and Nagasaki. Returning to the mainland it also performed inSeoul and the capital of Manchukuo, Hsinking (Shinkyō). The Japanesepublic appeared to enjoy the concerts, but the published reviews were for themost part damning. Tokyo’s own New Symphony Orchestra gave its two
hundredth subscription concert that year and embarked on its first tour overseas (albeit to countries occupied by Japan) to give two concerts in Seoul.38
Thanks to the training received from Russian musicians from Harbin, the
New Symphony Orchestra had become a highly disciplined ensemble. Thisand the stream of foreign artists in the 1920s and 1930s may well have madeJapanese critics harder to please.39
In the Kansai region the development of orchestral performance received
a major impulse when Emmanuel Metter (1878 1941), the conductor thesymphony orchestra in Harbin was invited as a conductor of the Osaka
Philharmonic Orchestra and then the Kyoto University Orchestra in 1926.40
Under his baton the latter became a major orchestra of the Kansai region. In
fact, several Russian musicians settled around Osaka and Kobe. Recent
research suggests that the transnational flows between Osaka and Shanghai
significantly contributed to the distinctive musical developments in the Kansai
region.41
37 From 1927 to 1929 and from 1929 to 1935 respectively.
38 Yukihiko Sano, N kyō 80 nen zenkiroku (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, 2007), 41.
39 Iwano, Ôdō rakudo no kōkyōgaku, 140 161. Peter Berton, “Prewar, Occupation, andPost-Occupation Japan: Three Vignettes,” JPRI Occasional Papers (Japan Policy
Research Institute at the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim) 35(2005).
40 Ben Okano, Metteru Sensei: Asahina Takashi, Hattori Ryōichi no Gakufu, Bōmeisha
Ukurainejin shikisha no shōgai (Tokyo: Rittōmyūjikku, 1995).
41 Junko Iguchi, “Osaka and Shanghai: Revisiting the Reception of Western Music in
Metropolitan Japan,” in Music, Modernity and Locality in Prewar Japan: Osaka andBeyond, ed. De Ferranti, Hugh and Tokita, Alison (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013).

European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 79

The above examples should suffice to show that encounters and exchanges
within East Asia played a vital role in the reception of Western classicalmusic in that region. A similar case could be made for Jazz, and possibly
other kinds of music.

6. Conclusion
Music in East Asia is a particularly rewarding field for studying culturalinteraction and transnational flows, yet so far it has received only limited
attention from scholars. Some work on contemporary popular music has been
published: however, as I hope to have shown, there is much scope for historical research as well. If we look, for example, at the areas for future researchon the history of cultural interaction in East Asia suggested by Huang ChunChieh,42 it will immediately become apparent that musical interaction can be
examined under all his headings:
1. Exchanges of people: Musicians in many cultures have long been itinerant, and before the advent of recorded music, the only way to experience
different kinds of music was to hear them performed live. European art musicwith its heavy reliance on text (notation) is different in that respect, at least
theoretically, but ultimately it would be virtually impossible to perform eventhis music without experience of the genre acquired through hearing it.
Musical exchange therefore relies first and foremost on travelling musicians,
whether professional or amateur, teachers, performers, managers, craftsmen or
merchants for music-related goods and services.
2. Exchange of goods: Musical performance needs hardware, starting withmusical instruments. Initially they may be imported, but then there will beefforts to produce them locally. Depending on the music in question, texts
might play a secondary role, but in the case of Western music, as with
Chinese music in previous times, texts about music were also imported, andfor Western music the importation of sheet music was crucial. In the twentieth century, audio technology becomes another important part of theexchange of music-related goods.
3. Exchange of ideas: Music from China and from the West each comes
laden with its own discourse.43 The reception of these discourses in the
The role of the Russian musical community in the Kansai area, however, has yet to
be examined in detail.
42 Chun-Chieh Huang, “Some Observations on the Study of the History of Cultural
Interactions in East Asia,” in Cultural Interaction Studies in East Asia: New
Methods and Perspectives, ed. Tao, Demin and Fujita, Takao (Osaka: Institute forCultural Interaction Studies, Kansai University, 2012 (2010)).
43 One might even argue that music as an abstract notion is discourse: Ian Hewett,Music: Healing the Rift (New York: Continuum, 2003), 2 3.

80

Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 7 2016

receiving countries depends very much on the local historical context. The
relationship of music and identity is also an important topic for investigation.
Music provides “a privileged point of entry” for, among others, “questions ofcultural identity and its expression, or its constructions, representations, andexchanges.”44 Musical meaning is constantly changing, and when the musicof one culture travels to another its meanings may well be transformed
beyond recognition. Japan is only one of many modern nations that has usedmusic in the Western idiom as an expression of national identity; from themilitary band playing for the official opening of the first railway line in 1872
to the bombastic celebrations in 1940 with bands and a symphonic concert tomark the 2600th anniversary of the legendary Emperor Jimmu’s ascension to
the throne. Korean and Japanese composers have made efforts to create“national” music in the idiom of European art music. And perhaps it is a
symptom of the search for a common East Asian identity that sometimes aperformer from one country champions the works of a composer fromanother, such as Nishizaki Takako’s recording of the “Butterfly Lovers” violin
concerto or Liu Wei’s recording of works by Japanese composers.45
Can music, then, tell us something about history that we cannot learn
from looking at other areas of human activity? I believe that the answer is,yes, although it may be that we first need to do more research in this area toappreciate fully what we can learn from doing so. One important area toconsider is the emotional power of music and how it might affect international relations, as Jessica Gienow-Hecht has done for trans-Atlantic relations; showing how playing and listening to German music in North America
created affective ties that survived political tensions and even war.46 Might
we discern comparable cases in the history of interactions in East Asia,
perhaps on a more limited scale or on a more local level?
Investigating music in the context of general history (rather than as a field
apart) will promote our understanding of (among other things) transnationalflows and the formation of local, national, regional and global identities, and44 Jane F. Fulcher, “Introduction: Defining the New Cultural History of Music, Its
Origins, Methodologies and Lines of Inquiry,” in The Oxford Handbook of the New
Cultural History of Music, ed. Fulcher, Jane F. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2011), 9, 10.
45 The most Famous Chinese Concertos, 1983/86; Nippon Columbia 8.240 158; The
Famous Japanese Violin Works Played by Liu Wei. 2009. VZCC 1025. For
Nishizaki’s discography, featuring several other Chinese works, see http://www.
naxos.com/person/Takako Nishizaki/552.htm (accessed 15 February 2016)
46 Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Sound Diplomacy: Music and Emotions in Transatlantic
Relations, 1850 1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). See also —,“Introduction,” in Music and International History in the Twentieth Century, ed.
Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E. (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2015).

European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 81

I hope that more scholars will soon be engaged in this field.