TANIGUCHI Akihiro
A Japanese composer, Hosokawa Toshio, once complained about Europeans' reactions against his compositions, because whenever he writes in the style of Luigi Nono or Pierre Boulez, Europeans criticize his music and question why a Japanese composer writes in the style of the European avant-garde. The reason was nothing particular; he just wanted to write in European styles. A Japanese critic, Chôki Seiji, responded to Hosokawa's comment, "What Europeans want from Asian composers differs from what they want from European composers."
I once talked about what Japanese music is with one of my professors. He said, "If no Japanese instrument is used, that's not Japanese music." I asked myself, "Does American music always use the banjo? I know many Japanese compositions that do not use any Japanese instruments. Are they not 'Japanese music'?"
There seem to be at least two kinds of Japanese music in this world: "Japanese music" for Europeans, and Japanese music for the Japanese. The former would be something "exotic" and something immediately noticeable as Japanese. The use of Japanese instruments therefore appeals the most to Europeans and Americans. The latter, on the other hand, does not have to be exotic, and a variety of musical language can be included. The compositions by Japanese composers in "European style," of course, are included.
Some Japanese composers cleverly use "Japanese music" for an immediate appeal to Europeans. For example, Toyama Yûzô composed Rhapsody for Orchestra by using Japanese folk tunes. This piece was created as an encore piece when a Japanese orchestra tours to European countries (and the United States). A year ago, according to my Japanese friend, this piece was performed in Boston. Many American listeners got so excited with the piece that they asked my friend about the composer and title. She was surprised, because Rhapsody is just a medley of Japanese folksongs, which young Japanese would not like to listen to nowadays. What she knew, actually, was that the piece consists of several Japanese folksongs, not the composer who created the piece. She did not think that it was composed by a serious Japanese composer.
Another example of "Japanese music" is Ishii Maki's So-Gu II, written for gagaku ensemble and orchestra in the 1970s and became very popular at that time, especially in Germany. The Japanese, on the other hand, did not find the piece so interesting. Instead, they thought that the composer used Japanese gagaku superficially. Just mixing some elements of two different musical traditions at the same time is not necessarily the way to synthesize two musical traditions.
Miyoshi Akira, on the other hand, is one of the representative Japanese composers who write Japanese music for Japanese people. Of course the composer himself does not limit the audience to the Japanese, but his music is little known to the Western countries, while he writes outstanding orchestra works and concertos which are well known to the Japanese. He learned composition in France and has written in European styles, even though he frequently uses Japanese themes in his works. Miyoshi could have used Japanese instruments to get world-wide popularity, but he has not used any of them because they are not part of his musical expression.
Most students at Japanese universities and conservatories study compositional techniques of European music and do not have to know about Japanese traditional music at all. One music school's facaulty even refused their graduate student's final project just because he used the shamisen (Japanese traditional plucked chordophone) in his composition.
European and American people need to know about Japanese modernism. Japan has become cosmoplitan through European and American products. Although we have not lost our musical tradition, not every Japanese wants to learn about it anymore. Traditional music does not fit to Westernized daily life in Japan. Nobody can stop the cosmopolitanization of modern Japan. Japanese instruments might sound exotic and fascinating to Westerners, but they may not be attractive to the Japanese, because Japanese instruments are not too foreign to them.
Japanese composers should have the liberty to write any type of music, and they do have it in Japan. I have to ask Europeans and Americans to give Japanese composers chances to write in European styles, because for some composers, that is simply what they want to do. Please do not judge music's quality by its nationality.