Alison Tokita

Bi-musicality in modern Japanese culture

This paper explores bi-musicality in modern Japan, and compares it with bilinguality at societal and individual levels. It considers the usefulness and limitations of the comparison of language and music. It establishes a model of musical competence as a preliminary to considering bi-musical competence, and schematizes the differences between Japanese and Western musical cultures for this purpose. In considering the relevance of bilingualism to the development of bi-musicality as an aspect of bi-culturality, I will argue that bilingualism as such is not so relevant to Japanese music, because early in Japan’s modern period Western music was effectively ‘translated’ into Japanese culture. The application of the concept of bi-musicality to music in modern Japan offers a new perspective on Japan’s musical modernity. The discussion will focus first on the societal level, that is, Japan as a bi-musical culture. Then some individual case studies will be presented of people whose bi-musicality has been central to their musical activity. This will lead to some tentative conclusions about the extent and nature of bi-musicality in Japan.

Trespasses: Selected Writings by Masao Miyoshi

conflicts between different nations as well as among Chinese political groups. There were also tensions between Chinese religions and Christianity and among the competing Christian missionaries. Todd, however, retained a rather simplistic perception of all of these historical events. Most importantly, she documented the social and political chaos in China during her time there and how an ordinary European missionary managed to cope with the turbulent circumstances at the intercultural crossway. Gardella is not the first to examine private documents in order to access the history of the CIM. His work is a sample of several recent publications of letters or diaries of CIM missionaries (e.g. Motoko Huthwaite, From China with Love: The Letters of Bishop and Mrs. Logan Roots, East Bridge, 2010). As an economic historian from a different field, Gardella seems reluctant to make further comments or analysis of the valuable primary resources. Apart from a short introduction on the historical background, he only provides a few footnotes and a brief clarification of Todd’s career at the beginning of the first chapter. Further discussions, for instance from perspectives of gender or cultural studies, would have been fascinating. In addition, the romanisation of Chinese names causes minor irritations. The editor uses the pinyin system to translate some of the Chinese names while for others he follows the original usage in Todd’s letters. Without bringing both together at least through an index, this is confusing at times. Overall, though, this is an excellent collection of private documents and valuable resources for historians working on colonial or religious history of China, although it primarily seems to be aimed at a broader readership.

Performed Narratives and Music in Japan

My field is performed narratives in Japan, especially genres with a strong musical component. In Japan, where literacy has been defined by the use of Chinese characters, writing in the vernacular using the phonetic kana scripts is closer to orality, and captures the sounds of the Japanese spoken language. With modernization much oral culture was lost, but collection of folklore from the early twentieth century was stimulated by the introduction of the Western discipline. Since the 1980s the oral-formulaic theory began to influence literary and other studies. Japanese translations of Lord’s The Singer of Tales and Ong’s Orality and Literacy have appeared in the late nineties. The disjunction of modernity has led to the reification of the premodern, now commonly called the traditional. Traditional has become a synonym for Japanese, native, non-Western, and pre-modern. A keyword in the performing arts and literary traditions is “transmission” (denshoo), which is congruent with the concept of oral tradition. In the postwar period, this concept has given way in official discourse to the concept of “tradition” (dentoo), which smacks of invented traditions. The report on Japanese studies in oral tradition by Hiroyuki Araki in