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During the Meiji era (1868-1912), Japan’s ruling elites incorporated aspects of
Western culture in their efforts to transform Japan into a modern nation-state. As part of
this, Western music in various forms was harnessed to diplomatic, military and educational
purposes, and institutions such as the Tokyo Music School were established to promote its
adoption. These formal, government-directed processes alone do not fully account for how
and why the Japanese public eventually came to embrace the art form. This study examines
the contours of a parallel informal spread by which Western music was gradually
disseminated to a wider Japanese public. It explores some of the key actors as well as the
diverse societal circumstances and activities that facilitated this diffusion.

The informal adoption and spread was neither coordinated nor inevitable. It
depended on the efforts of pioneers who tapped into the opportunities provided by
Western music and its surrounding social networks in ways that aligned with their own
backgrounds, skills and ambitions. These ‘multiple adoptions’ of Western music represent a
range of responses to modernity, spanning different realms of human enterprise: religious,
commercial, educational, and technological, as well as the purely artistic.

The study applies a microhistorical methodology based on the published and
unpublished accounts of Japanese and non-Japanese individuals, interviews with surviving
relatives and experts, and articles in the English and Japanese-language print media. It
comprises case studies that include the adoption of Western music at missionary schools,
the foundation and growth of a musical instrument shop, the role of a novel musical device,
the development of domestic musicmaking, the activities of a commercial band, and the
childhood encounters with Western music of enthusiasts who were born in the mid- to late-
Meiji era. These case studies highlight a number of interrelated themes and thus enable the
spread of Western music to be placed within a broader framework of Japan’s
transformation to modernity during this period

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This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for apostgraduate degree (e. g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University ofEdinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use:This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights,which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated.A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research orstudy, without prior permission or charge.This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from withoutfirst obtaining permission in writing from the author.The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially inany format or medium without the formal permission of the author.When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including theauthor, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given.   The Informal Adoption and Spread of Western Music in Meiji-era (1868-1912) Japan   James Walsh          PhD in History The University of Edinburgh   2024   1  Declaration  This thesis is the composition of the undersigned student, James Walsh. It is the student’s own work, and has not been submitted for any other degree or professional qualification.    James Walsh,  August, 2024   2  Abstract   During the Meiji era (1868-1912), Japan’s ruling elites incorporated aspects of Western culture in their efforts to transform Japan into a modern nation-state. As part of this, Western music in various forms was harnessed to diplomatic, military and educational purposes, and institutions such as the Tokyo Music School were established to promote its adoption. These formal, government-directed processes alone do not fully account for how and why the Japanese public eventually came to embrace the art form. This study examines the contours of a parallel informal spread by which Western music was gradually disseminated to a wider Japanese public. It explores some of the key actors as well as the diverse societal circumstances and activities that facilitated this diffusion.  The informal adoption and spread was neither coordinated nor inevitable. It depended on the efforts of pioneers who tapped into the opportunities provided by Western music and its surrounding social networks in ways that aligned with their own backgrounds, skills and ambitions. These ‘multiple adoptions’ of Western music represent a range of responses to modernity, spanning different realms of human enterprise: religious, commercial, educational, and technological, as well as the purely artistic.  The study applies a microhistorical methodology based on the published and unpublished accounts of Japanese and non-Japanese individuals, interviews with surviving relatives and experts, and articles in the English and Japanese-language print media. It comprises case studies that include the adoption of Western music at missionary schools, the foundation and growth of a musical instrument shop, the role of a novel musical device, the development of domestic musicmaking, the activities of a commercial band, and the childhood encounters with Western music of enthusiasts who were born in the mid- to late-Meiji era. These case studies highlight a number of interrelated themes and thus enable the spread of Western music to be placed within a broader framework of Japan’s transformation to modernity during this period.    3  Lay Summary  Nowadays, Western music, of a variety of genres, is performed and enjoyed across the world. Classical music was the first to spread from its European home, and now many of the world’s leading orchestras and ensembles hail from other regions. East Asia is particularly well represented in terms of renowned musicians and first-class concert venues. But how did this come to be the case? By considering Japan, the first Asian civilisation to open up to Western influences in modern times, this study sheds light on the puzzle of how an art form so inextricably associated with the West came to be embraced by people with such a dissimilar culture and different notions of music. It is the story of how a form of material culture from one part of the world became adapted and transplanted in another. From the mid-19th century, after almost 250 years of isolation, the Japanese came face to face with militarily and economically advanced Western nations. This forced them to undertake a massive political restructuring which, in 1868, culminated in a change of government known as the Meiji Restoration. The subsequent Meiji era, which lasted until 1912, was a time of great upheaval, experimentation and change. During this period, Japan’s new leaders strove to mould the country into a Western-style nation-state realising that, to achieve this and avoid being colonised, Japan would have to learn as much as possible from developed Western nations. They introduced economic, technological, industrial, military, and political systems from Europe and the United States and tailored them to Japanese circumstances.  Inevitably, contact with the West led to cultural changes too, and the adoption of Western music was part of this dynamic. The first Western music to be heard in Japan was in the form of military marches introduced to bolster discipline. Later, in 1878, the new Meiji government mandated the communal singing of songs known as shōka in primary schools. These initiatives suggest that the adoption of Western music was a top-down process, encouraged largely for the purpose of nation-building. However, this is far from the full story. Alongside this government-led adoption, Western music also spread organically among the Japanese public, generating interest among those who encountered it in different circumstances.  4  This study tells the story of the diverse array of Japanese individuals who responded to the opportunities presented by Western music in their personal lives. They range from ex-samurai converts and others who encountered hymns and Christian music, to members of commercial woodwind and brass bands who frequently performed to audiences in Yokohama and Tokyo. It also traces the founding, by a group of enterprising individuals, of a musical instrument shop called Jūjiya Gakkiten in the cosmopolitan Tokyo district of Ginza, highlighting the commercial aspect of Western music which was central to its adoption and spread. The importation, domestic production, and sale of a range of instruments gradually brought Western music into the daily lives of Japanese people. One of Jūjiya Gakkiten’s most iconic products, a novel device known as the shikōkin, for example, enabled users to enjoy a variety of musical genres at home without any prior skills. The study also features a number of young individuals who were enchanted by the Western music they heard in a domestic setting and, as a result, went on to become successful composers, conductors, musicians and educators in the 20th century.  Piecing together accounts of the lives of a cast of individuals, then, this study builds up the story of the informal adoption and spread of Western music. It demonstrates how the experimental zeitgeist of the Meiji period enabled the Japanese to experiment and play with a novel form of Western culture, one which in the fullness of time they came to embrace.   5  Acknowledgments  I offer my sincere gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Chris Harding and Professor Elaine Kelly, for the tireless support, advice, encouragement and friendship they have given me over the course of the past five years. I also thank Dr. Stephen McDowell and Dr. Chris Perkins who kindly agreed to be members of the supervisory panel for my Annual Reviews on more than one occasion and made invaluable criticisms of my interim work. I am very grateful to Professor Simon Partner and Dr. Ben Weinstein for agreeing to be my examiners, and I appreciate their detailed feedback and suggestions.  I extend my gratitude to Ms. Martina Benkova and the Postgraduate Research Office at the Department of History, as well as the team at the Student Disability Service and Health & Wellbeing Centre at the University of Edinburgh for their understanding and practical support which enabled me to continue with my studies despite health set-backs.  From December 2020 to August 2021, I conducted archival research in Japan. In spite of ongoing restrictions resulting from COVID-related lockdowns during this time, I received kind support from many people. In no particular order, I would like to thank Ms. Toshiko Watanabe and Mr. Junichi Sano of Yokohama Rekishi Salon, a local history group in Yokohama who showed me places of relevant historical interest in their city. I am grateful to Mr. Ubukata Tadao at the Asta Hall, Kurihashi, and Mr. Nakajima Mutsuo, who provided invaluable source material on the life of composer, Shimoosa Kannichi. Pastor Ueyama Shūhei of the Yokohama Kaigan Church kindly introduced me to Professor Akioka Yō of Ferris University as well as Ms. Araki Michiko and Ms. Takazuka Junko who are Archivists at Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen and spent a day helping me peruse the school records. I would also like to thank Ms. Kinoshita Yumiko at the Tokyo Union Theological Seminary Library for her patience in helping me research the religious journals and newspapers there. I am deeply indebted to Ms. Konoye Fumiko, Ms. Aeba Yūko, and Ms. Saegusa Mari at the Konoye Ongaku Kenkyūjo (Konoye Music Foundation), Tokyo who provided valuable source material on conductor and arranger, Konoye Hidemarō. Fumiko was kind enough to invite me to her home for lunch and allow me to interview her about her memories of her grandfather. I would also like to thank Mr. Sugiura Hidenori of the Kagawa Archives & 6  Resource Center, Tokyo. He introduced me to Ms. Issui Minegishi, grand master at Seikyōdō Ichigenkin. I am very grateful to her for granting me an interview about her great-great grandfather, Tokuhiro Taimu.  With regard to my research on the music shop,  Jūjiya Gakkiten, I am indebted to Ms. Nakamura Chieko and Mr. Kurata Yasunobu, the current Chairwoman and President, respectively, of Ginza Jūjiya Co., Ltd. They were both generous with their time and answered my questions about the history of their business. I thank Mr. Watabe Mitsuru, President of Christian bookstore, Kyobunkwan Inc. for introducing me to Dr. Kōji Nakajima, who gave me invaluable information on the missionary, Christopher Carrothers. I am also grateful to the Sales and Management Department at JEUGIA Co., Ltd., Kyoto for sending me a copy of the biography of the shop’s founder, Tanaka Yūki.  I am appreciative of the financial support I received both during and after my archival trip. I would like to thank the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation (GBSF) for their generous grant. I also thank the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology for offering me the Research Student Support Fund, and the British Association for Japanese Studies (BAJS) for awarding me the John Crump Studentship during my PhD write-up. I am blessed to be surrounded by friends and former colleagues who have encouraged me in my work. In Japan, I was happy to be reunited with old acquaintances. My conversations with Miyako “Mei Mei” Nakamura were particularly morale-boosting. I also offer thanks to former colleagues in Hong Kong, Professor Barry Asker, Professor Thomas Chan, and Dr. Camilla Lai, for encouraging me to pursue Doctoral studies. Lastly, I would like to say thank you to my parents, John and Vivien for their unwavering love and support. They have encouraged me in everything I have done throughout my life, and these past five years have been no exception. I am truly grateful.    7  Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 2 Lay Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................................... 5 Dramatis Personae .................................................................................................................................. 9 1. Western Music in a Christian Context ....................................................................................... 9 2. Jūjiya Gakkiten Network .......................................................................................................... 11 3. Composers, Conductors, Teachers, Musicians and Music Enthusiasts ................................... 13 List of Figures and Tables ...................................................................................................................... 17 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 21 Western Music – A Definition ........................................................................................................... 26 Historiographical Context ................................................................................................................. 27 De-centring ................................................................................................................................... 28 Embedding in a Wider Chronological and Geographical Context ................................................. 30 An Overview of the Spread of Western Music and a Review of the Related Literature .................. 33 The Standard Story: Formal Adoption .......................................................................................... 33 Informal Spread ............................................................................................................................ 38 Methodological Approach ................................................................................................................ 42 Chapter 1 - A Musical Divide ................................................................................................................. 47 Aesthetic Barriers .............................................................................................................................. 48 Social And Cultural Barriers .............................................................................................................. 55 The Importance of Informal Spread .................................................................................................. 66 Chapter 2 - Western Music in a Christian Context ................................................................................ 71 Case Study One: Music in Mission Schools ....................................................................................... 75 Case Study Two: Ex-Samurai and Music ........................................................................................... 83 Case Study Three: Hymns as a Gateway to Western Music ............................................................. 90 Chapter 3 - Entrepreneurship: the Story of a Shop .............................................................................. 98 Meiji Entrepreneurship ................................................................................................................... 100 The Founders of Jūjiya Shoten –“a Strange Shop” ......................................................................... 103 Jūjiya Shoten becomes Jūjiya Gakkiten ........................................................................................... 107 Kurata Shigetarō ............................................................................................................................. 110 Products and Business Model ......................................................................................................... 115 The International Dimension of Jūjiya Gakkiten’s Business ........................................................... 119 Chapter 4 - Creative Adaptations: Two ‘kin’ ....................................................................................... 132 Case Study One: The Shikōkin ......................................................................................................... 134 Invention, Adaptation, or Copy? ................................................................................................. 136 8  The Launch .................................................................................................................................. 139 Song Scrolls, Shikōkin Models and Variants ................................................................................ 140 Domestic Use of the Shikōkin ..................................................................................................... 146 Nationwide Promotion of the Shikōkin ....................................................................................... 149 The Demise of the Shikōkin ......................................................................................................... 153 Case Study Two: The Ichigenkin ...................................................................................................... 154 Tokuhiro Taimu and Changes to the Ichigenkin Tradition .......................................................... 157 Chapter 5 - Domestic Musicmaking: Bringing it Home ....................................................................... 166 Modernity in the Domestic, and the Domestic in Modernity ......................................................... 167 Domestic Musicmaking – an Historical Overview ........................................................................... 171 Hybrid Ensembles ........................................................................................................................... 176 Specialist Music Magazines and Domestic Music ........................................................................... 179 Instruments of First Encounter ....................................................................................................... 188 In the Home ................................................................................................................................ 188 Outside the Home ....................................................................................................................... 193 Chapter 6 - Western Music and Sociability ......................................................................................... 202 Case Study One: Commercial Bands ............................................................................................... 205 The Emergence of Commercial Bands ........................................................................................ 206 The Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai and the Tōyō Ongakukai .............................................................. 207 Case Study Two: Young Music Enthusiasts ..................................................................................... 213 A Variety of Backgrounds: The Aristocrat, the Farmer and Others ............................................ 214 Awkward Mavericks .................................................................................................................... 219 Bonds of Sociability ..................................................................................................................... 223 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 227 The Importance of Informal Spread ................................................................................................ 227 Commerce, Play and Pedagogy ....................................................................................................... 230 Further Research ............................................................................................................................. 235 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................ 243 Primary Sources .............................................................................................................................. 243 Secondary Sources .......................................................................................................................... 249     9  Dramatis Personae  The Dramatis Personae provides a short introduction to the main characters involved in this study. It includes their names, dates of birth and death, and brief biographical outlines. Where relevant, it also mentions any relationships or interactions they had with each other. They are grouped by category and are listed in an order that roughly follows their appearance in the thesis. In addition to the characters presented here, this study encompasses many others who played less prominent roles in the story of the informal spread of Western music. These individuals will be introduced in the respective chapters.  Notes:  i. Japanese names are presented in the following order: Family name, followed by given name. ii. Unless otherwise stated, translations from Japanese to English in this thesis are by the author.  1. Western Music in a Christian Context   Kinowaki Sonoko, 木脇園子 (dates unknown): Student at the missionary school, Kyōritsu Jogakkō, Yokohama, from around 1872. It is uncertain how long she was a pupil there. However, evidence suggests that she returned in the late 1880s to teach music and English. Little is known about her subsequent life.  Ibuka Kajinosuke 井深梶之助 (1854-1940): Ex-samurai, convert to Christianity, educator and minister. Ibuka was born in Aizu, Fukushima Prefecture. He fought on the side of the Shōgunate in the Bōshin War (1868-1869). After the Restoration, he studied at Union 10  Theological Seminary in New York and, on his return to Tokyo, became the second president of Meiji Gakuin University in 1891, remaining in the post until 1921.1   Tamura Naoomi 田村直臣 (1858-1934): Ex-samurai, convert to Christianity. Tamura Naoomi was the third son of a Yoriki, a Tokugawa-era police rank, and thus of mid-ranking samurai stock. He was baptised by US missionary, Christopher Carrothers (1839-1921), in October 1874, and ordained as a Presbyterian minister at the Church of Christ in Japan in December the same year. He studied in the United States from 1882, graduating from Princeton University in 1885. A member of the ‘Tsukiji Band’ of converts, Tamura was an educator, social reformer and author. He was also involved in the publishing business and had a bookstore.2  Uemura Masahisa 植村正久 (1858-1925): Ex-samurai, convert to Christianity. Uemura was baptised in Yokohama by the Reverend James H. Ballagh (1832-1920) in 1873, and was ordained as a Presbyterian Pastor in 1880. He was also a member of the Church of Christ in Japan. Uemura was an intellectual, theologian, and educator. He was strongly in favour of promoting native control of church matters in the country. A prominent member of the ‘Yokohama Band’ of converts, Uemura had close connections to the missionary schools in the port city. Among his many activities, Uemura played a central role in the development of Japanese Bibles and hymnals.3   1 A brief synopsis is provided at “A comrade-in-arms of Yae Yamamoto at Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle,” Meiji Gakuin University, accessed August 5, 2024, https://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/en/about/why/ibuka/. 2 See Aito Ōta, Kaika no Tsukiji, Minken no Ginza: Tsukiji Bando no Hitobito [Enlightened Tsukiji, People’s Rights and Ginza: The People of the Tsukiji Band] (Tōkyō: Tsukiji Shokan, 1989).  3 A short biographical profile and summary of Uemura’s theological stance is available at Akio Dohi, “Uemura, Masahisa,” Religion Past and Present (Leiden, Koninklijke Brill NV, 2011), https://doi.org/10.1163/1877-5888_rpp_SIM_125205. For his work related to hymns, see Shun’ichi Teshirogi, Meiji to Sanbika: Meijiki Purotesutanto Sanbika Seika no Shosō [The Meiji Era and Hymns: Aspects of Protestant Hymns in the Meiji Era] (PhD diss., Meiji Gakuin University, 2014), 97-104. 11  2. Jūjiya Gakkiten Network  Hara Taneaki 原胤昭 (1853-1942): Christian convert, publisher, educator, political activist and businessman. Hara was a civil servant before being baptised into the Presbyterian Church in 1874 by Carrothers. The same year, he opened the Christian bookshop, Jūjiya Shoten, in Ginza which later became the musical instrument shop, Jūjiya Gakkiten. Hara was involved in a wide range of ventures. He established the Hara Jogakko (Hara’s School For Girls) in 1876, which became Joshi Gakuin (Girls College). He was also a member of the ‘Tsukiji Band’ and helped Tamura in his book publishing and selling ventures. In 1882, Hara was charged for a publishing violation and imprisoned in Ishikawa-jima Prison. As a result of this experience, he became a strong advocate of prison reform and a supporter of ex-convicts.4  Toda Kindō 戸田欽堂 (1850-1890): Christian convert, publisher, and co-founder of Jūjiya Shoten. Toda was born into an aristocratic family. He was the son of Toda Ujimasa (1814-1876), the daimyō (Lord) of Ōgaki in Gifu Prefecture. He was adopted as a member of a branch family under Toda Kenmotsu. In 1871, he went to America to study with his half-brother, returning to Japan after one year. While overseas, he was influenced by Christianity and was baptised in Tokyo by Carrothers in 1874. Toda was a member of the Tsukiji Band, and became involved in the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement. He published two political novels, the first examples of such literature in Japan.5  Kurata Shigetarō 倉田繁太郎 (1859-1923): First Director of Jūjiya Gakkiten. Kurata was born in Toyama Prefecture, but it is not certain exactly where. His family was engaged in  4 Ben Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden: Kyoto Jujiya no Okamisan, [The Story of Tanaka Yūki: The Proprietress of Jūjiya in Kyoto] (Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha, 2002), 13-14; and Shirō Ōue (ed.), Meiji Kahōchō: Bukko Jinmei Jiten [Meiji Register: Dictionary of the Names of Deceased Persons] (Tokyo: Tokyo Bijutsu, 1988), 303. Biographical details can be found in Yūko Kataoka, Hara Taneaki no Kenkyū: Shōgai to Jigyō [A Study of Hara Taneaki: Life and Work] (Nishinomiya: Kansai Gakuin Daigaku Shuppankai, 2011).  5 Isao Yoshioka, Kyōdo Rekishi Jinbutsu Jiten [Local History Dictionary of People] (Tōkyō: Daiichi Hōki Shuppan, 1980), 118-119. 12  fishing or agriculture. Kurata moved to Tokyo aged somewhere between 17 and 19. Having failed to enrol in the navy, he was hired by Hara to work at Jūjiya Shoten. After the shift to musical instrument shop, Kurata developed the business until he was succeeded by his eldest son Hatsujirō.6  Nishikawa Torakichi 西川虎吉 (1849-1920): Born in Chiba Prefecture, Nishikawa started in the shamisen business in Yokohama, and learnt about the buying, selling and manufacture of musical instruments from Westerners involved in the trade in the port city. He produced a prototype of Japan’s first organ in 1884. In 1885, he established Nishikawa Fūkin Seizōsho (Nishikawa Organ Manufacturing). Nishikawa had a close personal and business relationship with Kurata Shigetarō and became an important domestic supplier to Jūjiya Gakkiten.7  Matsumoto Shinkichi 松本新吉 (1865-1941): Matsumoto worked for Nishikawa from 1887. In 1893, he set up his own instrument repair and retail shop in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. Matsumoto studied the manufacture, tuning and repair of pianos in the United States in 1900. In 1904, he invested in the incorporation of the company Matsumoto Gakki Gōshi Kaisha, and set up a shop, Matsumoto Gakkiten, in Ginza. He was also a supplier to Jūjiya Gakkiten.  Tanaka Denshichi 田中傳七 (1868-1914): Tanaka was the son-in-law of Kurata Shigetarō, and founder and Director of the Kyoto musical instrument shop, Jūjiya Tanaka Shoten. He was a commoner, and his place of birth is uncertain. Tanaka started working for Jūjiya  6 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 14-18; and Yasunobu Kurata and Nakamura Seirō, “Ginza Jūjiya Sōgyō no Tanmatsu” [The History of the Establishment of Ginza Jūjiya], Vols. 1 and 15, accessed October 3, 2021, https://www.ginzajujiya.com/company/. This history has been compiled by Kurata Yasunobu and Nakamura Seirō, the current and previous Presidents of Ginza Jūjiya Co., Ltd., respectively. It is based on the oral histories reported by staff and others involved with the shop since its establishment. 7 For comprehensive biographies of Nishikawa and Matsumoto, see Yūjirō Matsumoto, Meiji no Gakki Seizōsha Monogatari: Nishikawa Torakichi, Matsumoto Shinkichi [The Story of the Meiji Instrument Manufacturers, Nishikawa Torakichi, Matsumoto Shinkichi] (Tōkyō: Sōeisha, 1997). 13  Gakkiten in 1880. From 1891, he lived and worked as a businessman in California for about 15 years, on and off. He married Kurata’s eldest daughter, Yūki, in 1898.8  Kurata Hatsujirō 倉田初四郎 (1884-1921):  Hatsujirō was the eldest son of Kurata Shigetarō, whom he succeeded as Director of Jūjiya Gakkiten. After graduating from Shōgyō Kōkō (Commercial High School) in around 1905, Hatsujirō gained overseas business experience in the United States. As Director of the shop, he strengthened and built up the company’s business by forging strong commercial ties with well-known suppliers of Western musical instruments in the United States and Europe.9   3. Composers, Conductors, Teachers, Musicians and Music Enthusiasts  Nagai Kōji 永井幸次 (1874-1965): Educator and composer. Nagai was born in Tottori City, Tottori Prefecture, western Japan to minor samurai stock. His family was involved in agriculture. After graduating from Tokyo Ongaku Gakkō (Tokyo Music School, henceforth referred to in this study as TMS) in 1896, he taught music at schools in Shizuoka and Tottori Prefectures, and later in Kobe and Osaka. He is best known for founding Osaka Ongaku Daigaku (Osaka College of Music) in 1915.10   Yamada Kōsaku 山田耕筰 (1886-1965): Composer, conductor, and populariser of Western orchestral music. After graduating from TMS in 1908, Yamada studied in Berlin until 1913. He is considered to be Japan’s first symphonist. He wrote his debut symphony (“Triumph and Peace“ in F-major) in 1912, and went on to write chamber music, Lieder, choral and piano works. He was influential in the spread of Western music in Japan, founding the Tokyo  8 There is little in the way of published material on Tanaka Denshichi. See Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 32-35, 66-68, and 76-81. 9 Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vols. 16, and 24-28. 10 See Tottori-ken Hyakketsuden: Kindai Hyakunen [Tottori Prefecture, a Hundred Great Lives: A Hundred Years of Modernity], ed. Susumu Kaneda (Tottori: San'in Hyōronsha, 1970), 117-123. A brief profile can be seen at “Nagai Kōji,” Tottori Prefecture Website, accessed 6 August, 2024,  https://www.pref.tottori.lg.jp/89651.htm. 14  Philharmonic in 1915, and co-founding, with Konoye Hidemarō (see below), the Japan Symphonic Association in 1925.11  Komatsu Kōsuke 小松耕輔 (1884-1966): Composer, educator, and critic. Komatsu was born in present-day Yurihonjō City, Akita Prefecture. He graduated from TMS in 1906, and studied in Paris from 1920 to 1923. After returning to Japan, he created the National Music Association in 1927 to popularise music among the public through choral competitions, and became President of the All Japan Choral League in 1947.12  Takagi Tōroku 高木東六 (1904-2006): Composer, pianist, and writer. Takagi was born in Yonago City, Tottori Prefecture, but was raised in Isohara-machi, Ibaraki Prefecture. His father was a priest in the Eastern Orthodox church. He entered TMS in 1923 and studied music in France from 1928. He composed not only opera, and classical works for the orchestra and piano, but also children’s songs, school anthems, chanson, and other light, popular pieces.13  Tokugawa Yorisada 徳川頼貞 (1892-1954): Music scholar, politician, philanthropist, and populariser and patron of Western music. Tokugawa was born in Tokyo into the aristocracy (his ancestors were from the Tayasu branch of the Tokugawa Shōgunate). He attended the elite school, Gakushūin. After visiting a number of European countries, he studied for a PhD in musicology in Cambridge in 1914. Due to a lifetime dedicated to supporting music in Japan, he came to be known affectionately as Ongaku no Tonosama (Lord of Music).14  11 For a recent biography, see Nobuko Gotō, Yamada Kōsaku: Tsukuru no de wa naku Umu [Yamada Kōsaku: Not Create, Give Birth to] (Kyōto: Mineruva Shobō, 2014). 12 For Komatsu’s leadership in promoting ‘social music’ from the 1920s, see Mihoko Tsutsumi and André J. Thomas, “A History of the Japan Choral Association” (PhD diss., Florida State University, 2007), 6-10. 13 A brief profile can be seen at “Takagi Tōroku,” Tottori Prefecture Website, accessed 6 August, 2024,  https://www.pref.tottori.lg.jp/89658.htm. 14 For a comprehensive biography, see Kimio Murakami, Ongaku no Tonosama Tokugawa Yorisada: Sengohyakuokuen no Noburesu Oburiju [Tokugawa Yorisada, the Lord of Music: 150 Billion Yen Noblesse Oblige] (Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2012). 15  Konoye Hidemarō 近衛秀麿 (1898-1973): Conductor, composer and arranger. Hidemarō was born in Tokyo into a branch of the aristocracy as second son of Count Konoye Atsumarō (1863-1904), 3rd President of the House of Peers. Hidemarō’s elder brother was Fumimarō, (1891-1945) who became Prime Minister of Japan at the outset of World War II. Hidemarō was also educated at Gakushūin, and later studied the violin at Tokyo University of the Arts. He made several trips to Europe to learn composition. With Yamada Kōsaku, he co-founded the Japan Symphonic Association in 1925, which became the New Symphony Orchestra in October 1926 and eventually the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 1951. He had an active international career, appearing as guest conductor for numerous orchestras in Europe and the US.15   Shimoosa Kannichi 下総皖一 (1898-1962): Composer. Shimoosa was born into an agricultural family in Kurihashi, Saitama Prefecture. His father was the Principal at the local village school. He studied music at Saitama University and later attended TMS, graduating in 1920. Afterwards, he studied in Germany under composer, Paul Hindemith (1895-1963). Shimoosa was the composer of numerous children songs, shōka and school anthems.16   Saitō Hideo 齋藤秀雄 (1902-1974): Cellist, conductor, and academic. Born in Tokyo. Saitō was the son of renowned academic and English teacher, Saitō Hidesaburō (1866-1929). Saitō Hideo was a personal friend of Konoye Hidemarō and accompanied him to Leipzig in 1923 to study music. He was appointed principal cellist of the New Symphony Orchestra in 1927. Later in life, he was active in promoting music to young people.17    15 Kaoru Ōno, Konoe Hidemaro: Nihon no Ōkesutora o Tsukutta Otoko [Konoye Hidemarō: The Man who Created Japan’s Orchestras] (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2006). 16 His name is sometimes given as Shimofusa Kannichi. For a basic biography, see Mutsuo Nakajima, Nogiku no yō ni: Shimoosa Kan'ichi no Shōga [Like a Wild Chrysanthemum: A Biography of Shimoosa Kannichi] (Ōtonemachi, Saitama-ken: Ōtonemachi Kyōiku Iinkai, 1999). 17 See Minshū Ongaku Kyōkai (ed.), Saitō Hideo, Ongaku to Shōgai: Kokoro de Utae, Kokoro de Utae!! [Music and my Life: Sing from the Heart, Sing from the Heart!!] (Tōkyō: Minshū Ongaku Kyōkai, 1985). 16  Kobune Kōjirō 小船幸次郎 (1907-1982): Composer and conductor. Born in Yokohama, Kobune taught himself composition and conducting from an early age. As a young man he was fond of the harmonica, mandolin and guitar. He was one of the founders of Yokohama Symphony Orchestra in 1932. In 1938, he studied conducting under Bernardino Molinari (1880-1952) in Italy. He also met Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) in Finland in 1939.18   Tokuhiro Taimu 徳弘太橆 (1849-1921): Member of the samurai class, Tokuhiro was master and teacher of the ichigenkin, a traditional Japanese one-stringed zither, for which he wrote song collections. Tokuhiro was the founder member of the iemoto (school), Seikyōdō Ichigenkin, Tokyo. As well as being an accomplished musician, he also participated in, and wrote about other traditional pursuits such as haiku and the sencha tea-ceremony.19     18 Yokohama Kōkyō Gakudan, Shimin no Orugan: Kobune Kōjirō to Yokohama Kōkyō Gakudan [The People’s Organ: Kobune Kōjirō and The Yokohama Symphony Orchestra] (Yokohama: Kanagawa Shinbunsha, 2007). A brief biography can be seen at “Kojiro Kobune, Conductor and Composer,” Yokohama Symphony Orchestra, accessed August 6, 2024, https://yokokyo.net/conductors/Kojiro_Kobune(English).html 19 For details of Tokuhiro’s life and the ichigenkin, see Ichiei Ōnishi, Ichigenkin: Hitotsuo no Michi [Ichigenkin: One Way Together] (Kyoto: Kyoto Shūgakusha, 2002). 17  List of Figures and Tables  Figure Intro. 1. Palm Tracing of Tanaka Shōhei 田中正平 (1862-1945), Physicist and Inventor of the Pure Tone Organ.           23  Figure 2.1. Handwritten Tonic Sol-fa Score and Front Cover of The Tonic Sol-Fa Music Reader Used at Kyōritsu Jogakkō.             82  Figure 3.1. The Girls School Established by Julia Carrothers at Number A6, Tsukiji.    99  Figure 3.2. Hara Taneaki and Toda Kindō (No Dates Given).     103  Figure 3.3. Inside Cover of Toda’s Political Novel.      107  Figure 3.4. Jūjiya Biru (Jūjiya Building) in the Meiji Period (No Date Given).   110  Figure 3.5. Kurata Shigetaro (No Date Given).      111  Figure 3.6. A “Baby Organ” with 39 Keys, Manufactured by the US Company, Mason (around 1880).            113  Figure 3.7. Kurata Hatsujirō (No Date Given).      125  Figure 3.8. Jūjiya Gakkiten in around 1907.       126  Figure 3.9. Yokobue Doku Manabi (Self-Learning for the Harmonica) – Song Collection Edited by Hatsujirō Kurata (No Date Given).        128  Figure 4.1. Model Shikōkin on Display at Ginza Jūjiya Co., Ltd., Tokyo.       132-133   18  Figure 4.2. Newspaper Advertisement for the Shikōkin, December 9, 1884.  140  Figure 4.3. Newspaper Advertisement for the Shikōkin, March 8, 1894.   142  Figure 4.4. Newspaper Advertisement for the Shikōkin, December 5, 1894.  143  Figure 4.5. The Standard Model (right) and Small-sized Model (left) Shown in Shikōkin no Shiori.            144  Figure 4.6. Newspaper Advertisement with a Warning, April 7, 1897.     146  Figure 4.7. The Shikōkin in Domestic Musicmaking.       147  Figure 4.8. The 17 Domestic Retailers for the Shikōkin as of 1893.    150  Figure 4.9. An Ichigenkin Used for Practice on Display at the School, Seikyōdō Ichigenkin. 155  Figure 4.10. Portrait of Tokuhiro Taimu on Display at Seikyōdō Ichigenkin.   158  Figure 4.11a. Ichigenkin Notation without Dots (1848).     161  Figure 4.11b. Ichigenkin Notation with Dots (1899).      162  Figure 5.1. Baien Shōka Zu (Singing by the Plum Garden), 1887.    166  Figure 5.2. Wayogoso no Zu 和洋合奏之図 (Concert by Japanese and Western Instruments), 1903.            177  Figure 5.3a. Front Cover of Vuaiorin Dokushū no Tomo.     178  19  Figure 5.3b. “Koto, Shamisen, Shakuhachi to Gōsō no Ori no Kokoroe” (“Guidelines for the Occasion when Performing with the Koto, Shamisen, and Shakuhachi”).   179  Figure 5.4. Front Cover (left) and Inside Front Cover (right) of the First Edition of Ongaku Zasshi (The Music Magazine), September 1890.      181  Figure 5.5. Advertisement on the Inside Back Cover of Ongaku Sekai, July, 1909.  184  Figure 5.6. Advertisement on the Back Cover of Ongaku Sekai, November, 1909.  185  Figure 6.1. Shimoosa’s Transcription of the Ditty.      218      Table 3.1. Music-related Items from around 1892 to around 1907.        115-116  Table 3.2. Publications Sold from 1897 through the End of the Meiji Period (1912).            116  Table 3.3. New Product Line-up from around 1907.          126-127  Table 5.1. Popular Western Instruments Used in Domestic Musicmaking.       186-187  Table 5.2. The Sale of Yamaha Organs by the Osaka-based Musical Instrument Shop, Miki Gakkiten.           190    20          21  Introduction  In 2015, Robert Markow wrote that Japan boasted a concert orchestra for every 90 square miles of land and that the densely populated Tokyo Metropolitan area alone was home to the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo City Philharmonic, Japan Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, and Tokyo Symphony. These make up the so-called ‘Big Eight’: “full-size, full-time, fully professional orchestras, collectively providing more than 1,200 concerts a year.”1 In a more recent article in 2019, he described Tokyo as the “epicenter of classical music,” not only for Japan but for the whole of Asia. The article conveyed the richness and diversity of the classical music scene in the metropole and country at large, and compared Tokyo’s orchestral cornucopia with less endowed world-cities like London, Moscow, New York, Berlin and Vienna. In addition to the ‘Big Eight’, Markow drew attention to the 1,600 or so professional and amateur orchestras in the country, and the plethora of halls suitable for hosting classical performances – two-hundred in Tokyo alone, of which seven can accommodate large orchestras. Markow listed some major concert venues including Suntory Hall, Tokyo’s preeminent classical concert venue, as well as the Bunka Kaikan, Bunkamura, the NHK Hall, and many smaller, but equally first-rate, concert halls.2 These venues - and the orchestras they house - are a physical and countable manifestation of Japan’s ongoing love affair with Western classical music. Most were built during the second half of the 20th century when Japan was experiencing four decades of sustained high economic growth. With increased material wealth came a revived interest in this aspect of Western culture, which had been discouraged during the years of World War II. Although it faced competition from Rock and Roll and the Beatles in the 1950s and 1960s, and later from subsequent Western pop and rock imports as well as a burgeoning home-grown popular music scene, Western classical music has continued to attract large numbers of loyal devotees. Japan has also produced home-grown talent. Many big names in classical  1 Robert Markow, “Tokyo’s Big Eight Orchestras Flash Bigtime Qualities,” Classical Voice North America, October 21, 2015, https://classicalvoiceamerica.org/2015/10/21/japanese-orchestras-2015/.  2 Robert Markow, “The wonder of Tokyo and beyond: classical music, opera and dance in Japan,” bachtrack, December 2, 2019, https://bachtrack.com/feature-classical-music-in-japan-december-2019/.   22  music who were born in the Shōwa Period (1926-1989), came to prominence in the mid- to late-20th century. Among these were individuals such as composer and writer, Takemitsu Tōru 武満徹 (1930-1996), internationally renowned conductor, Ozawa Seiji 小澤征爾 (born 1935), and pianist and conductor, Dame Uchida Mitsuko, DBE 内田光子 (born 1948). Japanese affection for Western classical music predates World War II, and the recent resurgence in interest is built on a solid foundation that existed since before the 1940s. Nitobe Inazo wrote in 1931 that it was during the Taishō period (1912-1925), particularly after the introduction of the gramophone player and recorded sound in 1913, that Western music took off in Japan.3  More recently, Margaret Mehl noted that, by the 1930s, Japan was already consuming Western art music to the same extent as other developed nations, and that Japanese musicians and conductors started to garner international acclaim after 1945. She added that Japan also became a globally recognised manufacturer of musical instruments in the form of Yamaha pianos and Suzuki violins.4 The extent to which Japanese individuals had become integrated into the international classical music scene in the 20th century is revealed in the unusual hobby of Japanese conductor and arranger, Konoye Hidemarō (1898-1973). Konoye had a penchant for collecting autographs and other memorabilia connected with the various foreign and Japanese musical luminaries whose acquaintance he had made during his illustrious career. He kept a set of notebooks in which he asked these friends to trace an outline of their palms, record their names and the date, and write a short message. The entries in his collection straddle World War II and the names read as a ‘who’s who’ in the pantheon of mid-20th century Western classical music. In chronological order, some of the best known contributors include the German conductor, Otto Klemperer (1885-1973), who signed in 1937; German conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954), who signed in 1937; German pianist, Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991), who signed in 1954; Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky  3 Inazo Ota Nitobe, and Institute of Pacific Relations Japanese Council, Western Influences in Modern Japan: a Series of Papers on Cultural Relations (Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1931), 520-521. 4 Margaret Mehl, “Western Art Music in Japan: A Success Story?” Nineteenth-century Music Review 10, no. 2 (2013): 211, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S1479409813000232. 23  (1882-1971), who signed on a visit to Japan in 1959; and legendary American jazz clarinettist, Benny Goodman (1909-1986), who signed in 1964.5 Figure Intro. 1. Palm Tracing of Tanaka Shōhei 田中正平 (1862-1945), Physicist and Inventor of the Pure Tone Organ. Courtesy of Konoye Ongaku Kenkyūjo (Konoye Music Foundation), Tokyo. Photo by author and reproduced under fair-use principle.  Preceding the contemporary cohort of classical musicians that includes Takemitsu, Ōzawa and Uchida was a generation of musical individuals born in the Meiji Period (1868-1912) when Western music was still a novel art form in Japan. In a time before the gramophone player and radio, it occupied a space on the periphery of the Japanese cultural world and was inaccessible to most of the population. There is no clear demarcation between the generations. Konoye and other members of this ‘Meiji vanguard’ remained active well into the 20th century. However, this former group were pioneers and some acted  5 Viewed at the Konoye Ongaku Kenkyūjo (Konoye Music Foundation), Tokyo. 24  as sempai (mentors and teachers) to the subsequent generation. Composer of film music, Kiyose Yasuji 清瀬保二 (1900-1981), for example, was a great influence on Takemitsu.6 Saitō Hideo, who was appointed Principal Cellist in Konoye’s New Symphony Orchestra in 1927, became Ōzawa Seiji’s teacher and inspired him to become a conductor. Part of this study examines the accounts of selected members of this ‘Meiji vanguard’ community, including Konoye and Saitō, and reveals the specific musical encounters in their early years that inspired them to embark on a life in Western music. However, this pioneering group of composers, conductors, musicians and teachers were not the first to come into contact with Western music, and it is thus necessary to rewind further back in time. Since the 1860s, a social and physical infrastructure around Western music had started to emerge. The introduction of Western music was initially top-down, an offshoot of the Meiji government’s plan to modernise society based on a Western model. However, private and informal processes soon took hold, and gradually Western music and instruments, which had been associated with the military, primary schools and the elite, became increasingly available to, and sought after by widening sectors of society. This study traces the contours of this tentative and faltering informal diffusion of Western music from the 1870s to the end of the period. It was a process that was driven by the enterprising zeal of a group of individuals who spanned a range of social classes and occupations. This spread owed its momentum, and also its haphazard nature, to the experimental and entrepreneurial spirit of the Meiji era. Historians recognise the period as a time of turmoil and rapid change when Japanese society was radically transformed from a quasi-feudal system to a modern nation state. Various metaphors have been employed to capture the giddy sense of this transformation. Gerald Figal cites novelist and playwright, Izumi Kyōtarō 泉鏡太郎 (1873-1939), who likened the Meiji Period to a twilight time. This image captures the mood of a liminal period characterised by “a constantly shifting succession of  6 Hitomi Sano, “Takemitsu Tōru and the Pre-war ‘Folk Style’ Composers, Kiyose Yasuji, Hayasaka Fumio and the Perception of ‘Japanese-style Works’,” Kobe Daigaku Hyōgen Bunka Kenkyū 10, no. 2 (2011): 171-183, https://doi.org/10.24546/81002917.  25  things seen or imagined; a scene that constantly changes.”7 Carol Gluck describes the transformations from the 1850s to the 1880s as an “historical earthquake” and contends that, in Japan, modernity progressed in a zig-zag, rather than a straight line.8 Citing statesman, Fukuzawa Yukichi 福澤諭吉 (1835-1901), Gluck alludes to the fact that Japanese expressed a sense of living two lives, one before and one after the Restoration of 1868.9 This study shows how the chaotic, ever-fluctuating nature of the Meiji period was reflected in the unpredictable way in which Western music spread, shaping and being shaped by the individuals who came into contact with it.  The professional and organised world of Western music, which started to coalesce from the subsequent Taishō period and became established over the 20th century, therefore, had its roots in an earlier period of turbulence and uncertainty. During the Meiji period, its adoption and spread was far from inevitable. Despite attempts by the government to integrate Western music into Japanese society primarily through the introduction of singing in primary schools, for a long time, Japanese met the foreign art form with indifference, if not suspicion. Complementing these government initiatives, its diffusion depended on the efforts of pioneers - individuals who tapped into Western music and surrounding social networks as a means to navigate the turbulent transformations of the Meiji period in ways that aligned with their own backgrounds, skills and ambitions. These multiple adoptions of Western music spanned different realms of human endeavour: religious, commercial, educational, and technological, as well as the purely artistic.  This study tells the story of the informal spread of Western music through the lives of, and relationships between, people who came into contact with it. Focusing on an ensemble of characters rather than detailing the lives of one or two, it brings together hymn-singing ex-samurai, musical instrument shop-owners, an aspiring piano maker, a master and teacher of a one-stringed zither, and a community of aspiring composers, conductors and musicians. It presents the findings under a number of themes, which situate  7 Izumi Kyōkai, “Tasugare no Aji,” cited in Gerald A. Figal, Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 1-2, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=3007845. 8 Carol Gluck, “The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now,” The American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (2011): 683, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23308221. 9 “Two lives”: Fukuzawa Yukichi, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1875), trans. David A. Dilworth and G. Cameron Hurst III (New York, 2008), 4, cited in Gluck, “The End of Elsewhere,” 679. 26  the informal adoption and spread of Western music within broader societal change, and reveal why and how Western music seeped into the spaces opened up by these individuals to become part of the fabric of Japan’s modernity. Western Music – A Definition  It is necessary, at this early stage, to define what is meant by the term “Western music” in this study. In much of the literature outlined below, the term “Western music” (Seiyō Ongaku) has been used liberally without providing an exact specification of what it encompassed. One alternative term used by scholars is “Western art music.” For example, Hiromu Nagahara uses this term to draw a distinction with popular genres, which are the subject of his study. “Western art music,” he contends, failed to penetrate “the hearts and minds of the majority…” despite attempts to popularise it.10 Margaret Mehl uses the term “Art music,” more broadly to include genres as diverse as military music and hymns.11  This study employs the term “Western music” in an all-encompassing sense for two reasons. Firstly, for ordinary Japanese themselves, the disparate forms of Western music were united in their being foreign and alien. Nagahara rejects the claims of historian, Thomas C. Smith, that the first two decades of the Meiji Period saw a democratisation of culture in general, and instead points to the re-emergence of new hierarchies representing a “plethora of professionalized artistic and intellectual circles.”12 However, with the initial adoption of Western music, Japan was in effect a blank slate. Without the historical and cultural context, preconceptions about what, in Europe, constituted elite or déclassé Western music were non-existent in Japan. Secondly, Western music entered the country in a range of different guises and performed a variety of functions from the beginning. Ōmori Seitarō reflects on its spread in the Meiji Period, which he categorises as “ikuseiki” (a period of nurture). He writes: “During this time, Western music manifested in a wide range of  10 Hiromu Nagahara, Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan’s Pop Era and Its Discontents (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), 27, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.4159/9780674978409. 11 Mehl, “Western Art Music in Japan,” 211-222; and Margaret Mehl, “European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries” Journal of Cultural Interactions in East Asia 7, no. 1 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1515/jciea-2016-070106. 12 Thomas C. Smith, “Japan’s Aristocratic Revolution,” in Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 146-147, cited in Nagahara, Tokyo Boogie-Woogie, 7-8. 27  forms.”13 Light dance music to seduce Western elites at the Rokumeikan existed alongside the sober hymns of Protestant missionaries and rousing military marches.  At the turn of the century, the Tokyo Ongaku Gakkō (Tokyo Music School, henceforth referred to in this study as TMS), an institution established to educate teachers, started to hire more European, particularly German, instructors. Its mission shifted from promoting the practical and pedagogical, toward emphasising the aesthetic and artistic aspects of music. This turn was reflected in an increased presence of more serious canonical works.14 However, despite this change, performances of Western music continued, throughout the period, to encompass a broad array of genres and took place in a range of venues, including theatres, parks, the street and the home. Articles and reviews in the English language print media such as the Japan Weekly Mail (henceforth referred to as JWM) demonstrate the wide variety of occasions in Yokohama and Tokyo which featured Western music. These ranged from orchestral concerts to balls, fetes, and garden parties as well as commencement ceremonies given by missionary schools. Even in the more formal concerts performed by musicians from the TMS and the Nihon Ongakukai (Japan Music Society), solo pieces and lighter novelty musical numbers would be mixed in with symphonic works. The eclectic array of genres reflected the experimental and patchwork nature of the Meiji period. By employing an all-encompassing definition of Western music, this study therefore demonstrates how multiple different forms played their part in its spread.  Historiographical Context This study draws together a range of social, cultural, religious, and economic themes. It is therefore appropriate to situate it in a broader context and consider how it not only speaks to questions raised by historians of the Meiji period, but also relates to a wider 19th-century global historiography. The following section identifies two recent trends in the scholarship on the Meiji period. The first involves a de-centring of the history in an effort to  13 Seitarō Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku: Perī Raikō kara 130-nen no Rekishi Dokyumento = History of Music [Western Music in Japan: a 130-year Document History from the Arrival of Perry] (Tōkyō: Shinmon Shuppansha, 1986), 95. 14 See, for example, Yūko Chiba, Doremi o Eranda Nihonjin [The Japanese who Chose Do-re-mi] (Tōkyō: Ongaku No Tomosha, 2007), 113; Yasuto Okunaka, Kokka to Ongaku: Izawa Shūji ga Mezashita Nihon Kindai [The State and Music: Izawa Shūji’s Ambitions for Japan’s Modernity] (Tōkyō: Shunjūsha, 2008), 224-231; and Kōichi Nomura, “Occidental Music,” in Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era, ed. Komiya Toyotaka, trans. Edward G. Seidensticker and Donald Keene (Tokyo: Ōbunsha, 1956), 493-494.     28  better understand how the transformations of the era affected those on the social and geographical peripheries. The second places Japan in a wider temporal and geographical context, challenging the notion that Meiji modernisation represented a complete break from the countries own past and was unique in 19th-century global history. As well as Meiji-era historiography, this section surveys broader historical and musicological scholarship to show how the current study fits into this larger picture.  De-centring For some time, scholars have challenged an entrenched view that the consequences of the Meiji Restoration can be attributed primarily to an organised, top-down revolution orchestrated by cosmopolitan elites. In 1994, Sheldon Garon stated that historians: “have written little about what modernization and modernity meant to the Japanese people themselves…,” justifying this critique by adding: “The quest to make Japan “modern” captured a diverse set of actors.”15 In 2011, Carol Gluck noted that in Japan, modernity attracted a variety of people from different social strata who were striving for new ways of living and being and that, while the main protagonist of Japan's modernity may have been the state, provincial and private actors were needed to enact the state’s objectives.16 William Steele has also stressed the need for different narratives in Meiji scholarship and contends that these can be explored by looking at local events from below and taking into account the periphery. By doing so, it is possible, according to Steele, to “construct a broader and more complex historical account,” one which complements, not replaces, the existing historiography.17 In recent years, scholars have responded to this call for a more nuanced account of Meiji modernity in a diverse array of topic areas. William Brecher, for example, has looked at entrepreneurship in the leisure resort industry; Christopher Craig notes that a bottom-up dynamic was vital in the context of agricultural changes; and a number of scholars have investigated the agency of those lower in society in the formation of grassroots protest  15 Sheldon Garon, “Rethinking Modernization and Modernity in Japanese History: A Focus on State-Society Relations” The Journal of Asian studies 53, no. 2 (1994): 347, https://doi.org/10.2307/2059838. 16 Gluck, “The End of Elsewhere,” 682-683.  17 William M. Steele, Alternative Narratives in Modern Japanese History (New York, NY: RoutledgeCurzon, 2009), 1-2.  29  movements.18 Focusing on the geographical peripheries, Louise Young’s study of second-tier cities paints a picture of multiple individual modernities, in which ideas were mediated by local social networks.19 Simon Partner, Laura Nenzi and others have written microhistories which consider how particular individuals responded to social, cultural and political transformations.20 Finally, a number of studies have focused on foreign enclaves in port cities such as Yokohama, where early encounters with Westerners transformed everyday practices, ideas and materials.21 Leveraging the multifaceted nature and broad-ranging influence of music, the current study combines elements of these bottom-up, microhistorical approaches.22 It deploys musicologist, Christopher Small’s framework of “musicking,” which treats music as a cultural practice encompassing a set of rituals, behaviours and relationships and involving a wide range of actors.23 Accordingly, the protagonists in this study are not only those directly involved in the production of music such as musicians, composers, and conductors, but also their audiences and other music enthusiasts. Underlining the significance of processes that  18 See respectively, William Puck Brecher, Japan’s Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930. Vol. 13 (United States: BRILL, 2021), 241-310, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=6532390;   Christopher Craig, Middlemen of Modernity: Local Elites and Agricultural Development in Modern Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2021), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780824889272; Anne Walthall, Peasant Uprisings in Japan: a Critical Anthology of Peasant Histories, ed. and trans. Anne Walthall (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); and Eiko Maruko Siniawer, Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists: The Violent Politics of Modern Japan, 1860–1960 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.7591/9780801461859. 19 Louise Young, Beyond the Metropolis: Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 15-44, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1525/9780520955387. 20 For microhistories focused on individuals, see Simon Partner, The Merchant’s Tale: Yokohama and the Transformation of Japan (New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2017), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.7312/part18292; and Laura Nenzi, The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko: One Woman’s Transit from Tokugawa to Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,, 2015), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780824853891. 21 Pat Barr looks through the eyes of foreign observers and tells the story of Japan’s transformation using anecdotes that centre on people, places such as Yokohama Park, and objects, like the jinrikisha. See Pat Barr, The Deer Cry Pavilion: A Story of Westerners in Japan, 1868-1905 (London: Macmillan, 1968).  For other recent studies on the cosmopolitan treaty ports such as Yokohama, see Donna Brunero, and Stephanie Villalta Puig, Life in Treaty Port China and Japan, 1st ed. (Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2018), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7368-7; and Eric C. Han, and Harvard University Asia Center, Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014). https://doi.org/10.1163/9781684175420. 22 Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht notes that music is “a tool to reconstruct the past by shedding light on groups, individuals, organizations, events, objects, actions, and phenomena.” See Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Music and International History in the Twentieth Century (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015), 4, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9781782385011. 23 Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2011), 1-18. 30  involved private enterprise, it also includes the makers, sellers, and customers of musical instruments. It shows encounters with Western music in a variety of settings: the concert hall, the school, the church, the street, and the home, and also demonstrates the importance of cosmopolitan entrepots of Yokohama and the Tokyo district of Ginza as loci of encounter between Japan and the West.  Embedding in a Wider Chronological and Geographical Context A number of recent studies have taken a broader perspective, embedding the history of the Meiji period in the longue durée and the context of 19th-century global history.24 A question which has exercised scholars concerns the extent to which the Meiji moment represented an historical rupture from Japan’s past. Many acknowledge that the abruptness of the transformations signified a definite break from the preceding Tokugawa era. As mentioned above, Carol Gluck notes the chaotic and experimental nature of the period.25 However, viewing the 19th-century as a whole, David Howell makes the point that continuities in the lives of ordinary people could be seen, even in the midst of great change.26 The tension between continuity and change has also been explored through specific phenomena. Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg note that castles, for example, retained their traditional role and significance into the Meiji period.27 Other scholars have pointed to the tea-ceremony as a cultural practice which, in the Meiji period, combined a rediscovery of tradition with genuine innovation.28   A central premise of this study is that the Meiji period was one of great rupture and change. However, it also demonstrates that in the midst of these transformations, the Japanese deployed strategies that enabled them to maintain connections with the past in an  24 Andrew Gordon examines the Meiji period in the longue durée and attempts to view it in a global context, seeing Japan’s modernisation as a variation on a theme in modern history. See Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, International third edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 25 Gluck, “The End of Elsewhere,” 679-683.  26 David L. Howell, Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan. 1st ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1525/9780520930872. 27 Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg, Japan’s Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/9781108680578. 28 See Rebecca Corbett, Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018), muse.jhu.edu/book/61281; and Taka Oshikiri, Gathering for Tea in Modern Japan Class, Culture and Consumption in the Meiji Period (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=5400939. .  31  effort to bring processes of modernity under control. One such strategy was to adapt newly imported technologies, ideas and cultural practices to fit a Japanese setting. The case of the adoption and spread of Western music exemplifies this and shows that during this period of experimentation, the Japanese incorporated Western music into their lives in playful and creative ways. In addition to the connections with Japan’s own past, the transformations of the Meiji period were embedded in a global history of the second half of the 19th century. The changes that occurred in Japan exhibited parallels with other parts of the world.29 Japan was not a latecomer with regard to certain crucial aspects of modernity. Ian Jared Miller, for example, contends that in the adoption of fossil fuels and electrification, Japan kept pace with Western countries.30  This debunks a simplistic “rise of the West” narrative which implies that global historical forces were unidirectional. This study shows that, while strongly influenced by Western cultural currents, Japanese actors did not simply imitate the West and instead exhibited agency and control over the pace and direction of modernisation and cultural adaptation.  The adoption of Western music gives a privileged insight into how Meiji Japan can be understood as part of the larger 19th-century world with its complicated flows of influence. Musicologists have expressed a growing interest in exploring a genuine global history of music, one which recognises that musics from different regions have always penetrated and influenced each other. By adopting a “musicking” approach, such a history would describe a complex web of “encounters, entanglements, interactions, interpenetrations, networks, flows, and fusions.”31 This study provides specific examples which show that, through  29 For studies that link the Meiji moment with other similar events around the world see: Mark Ravina, To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan's Meiji Restoration in World History (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), Robert I. Hellyer and Harald Fuess, eds., The Meiji Restoration: Japan as a Global Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/9781108775762; and Catherine Phipps, “Introduction: ‘Meiji Japan in Global History.’” Japan Forum 30, no. 4 (2018): 443-451, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/09555803.2018.1538160.  30 Ian Jared Miller, Julia Adeney Thomas, and Brett L. Walker, Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context of a Global Power (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780824838775. 31 Daniel K. L. Chua, “Global Musicology: A Keynote without a Key,” Acta Musicologica 94, no. 1 (2022): 114, muse.jhu.edu/article/857072. See also Lukas Christensen, and Daniel K. L. Chua, “Editorial: Defamiliarizing the West,” IMS Musicological Brainfood 3, no. 1 (2019), 3, cited in Sanela Nikolić, “Five Claims for Global Musicology,” Acta Musicologica 93, no. 2 (2021): 227, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/five-claims-global-musicology/docview/2623611786/se-2. 32  Western music, Japan was linked to global currents and networks of interaction, not only directly in the production and consumption of music, but also indirectly through contact with Christian missionaries, Western business practices and other cultural influences.  The manner in which the adoption of Western music played out in society in other parts of the world undergoing similar deep-seated transformations exhibits parallels with Japan. Bob Van Der Linden provides a global overview. Citing C.E. Bayly, he describes the spread of Western music in the context of increased cultural uniformity across the world during the “long 19th-century.” As in Japan, local elites elsewhere strove to adopt and standardise Western music as part of their nations’ modernisation, while attempting to tether this adoption to local cultural foundations and thereby maintain continuity. Also similarly to Japan, Western musicians, teachers, missionaries and instruments facilitated the transfer.32 Specific examples include the Ottoman territories of Egypt and Palestine where the adoption of Western music exhibited parallels as well as differences with Japan.33 In the United States too, European, particularly German, symphonic music was adopted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and came into conflict with a quest to find a national spirit in music that reflected the country’s own cultural identity and was worthy of its place in the world.34 Like Japan, a vibrant, commercial world around music emerged after 1860 as professionals such as lawyers, businessmen, and real-estate developers, became investors.35  The two perspectives discussed above - decentring and embedding in a wider context - lend themselves to the analytical approaches of microhistory and global history, respectively. This study aims to combine these two disparate modes by applying knowledge gained from a close reading of the primary sources based on local processes and contexts, to the study of flows, connections and networks that were regional or even global in scale. It focuses on an ensemble of individuals and takes into account the important role of specific  32 Bob van der Linden, “Non-Western National Music and Empire in Global History: Interactions, Uniformities, and Comparisons,” Journal of global history 10, no. 3 (2015): 431-456. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S1740022815000212. 33 See respectively Adam Mestyan, “Power and Music in Cairo: Azbakiyya,” Urban History 40, no. 4 (2013): 681–704. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926813000229; and Rachael Beckles Willson, Orientalism and Musical Mission: Palestine and the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 3-4 and 116-120.  https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/CBO9781139567831. 34 Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht, Sound Diplomacy: Music and Emotions in Transatlantic Relations, 1850‒1920 (University of Chicago Press, 2009), 153-154 and 166. 35 Ibid., 115-118. 33  places and objects as a way to understand the larger historical narratives and processes of cultural adoption.36 By including both Japanese and Western sources, it captures a variety of global perspectives and avoids falling into the trap of Eurocentrism.  An Overview of the Spread of Western Music and a Review of the Related Literature  With reference to the relevant literature, the following section describes the main trends and events surrounding the formal, top-down reception and spread of Western music, identifying the people and institutions that contributed to the Meiji government’s efforts. It then introduces the concept of an informal spread, identifying clues in the literature that have presented new perspectives and prompted the investigations taken up in this study. As discussed above, this research is multi-disciplinary and ranges widely across different themes. It is also nested within broader philosophical, anthropological, and sociological arguments, particularly around the topics of modernity and cultural transfer. Each of the themes has its own hinterland of scholarship which will be reviewed separately in the relevant chapters. This introductory chapter concentrates on the core literature that relates to the adoption of Western music in Meiji-era Japan.  The Standard Story: Formal Adoption The Meiji period was a time of rapid transformation. Under domestic and international pressure, Japanese politics had been in a state of turmoil since the middle of the 19th century, culminating in the fall of the Tokugawa Shōgunate in 1868. The newly established Meiji government faced the monumental task of picking up the pieces and creating a modern state that would put Japan on a footing with advanced and expansionist Western nations. To this end, reform-minded elites introduced wholesale changes in the areas of the military, politics, economics, education and industry, which catapulted Japan into the ranks of industrialised nations within four decades.37 In the 1870s and 1880s, during a phase of relative openness to Western influences captured by the slogan Bunmei Kaika 文 36 For the introduction to a range of essays which advocate the use of microhistory in global histories, see John-Paul A. Ghobrial, “Introduction: Seeing the World Like a Microhistorian,” Past & Present 242, no. Supplement 14 (2019): 1-22, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz046. 37 For general histories of Japan’s transformation during the Meiji-era, See Gordon, A Modern History of Japan, Marius B. Jansen, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5, The Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Kenneth B. Pyle, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2002), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.4159/9780674039100; and Christopher Harding, Japan Story: In Search of a Nation, 1850 to the Present (UK: Penguin Books, 2019). 34  明開化 (Civilisation and Enlightenment), prominent members of the Meiji government such as Fukuzawa Yukichi began advocating the promotion of Western ideas, customs, and material culture as an integral part of a ‘civilising’ package. This included Western music, which soon became instrumental to the government’s military, educational and diplomatic initiatives.  The historiography of the adoption and spread of Western music in Japan reflects this complex and dynamic background and, accordingly, accounts have emphasised different aspects. Some scholars have presented comprehensive narratives; some have focused on particular topics; and others have provided summaries of the Meiji-era adoption as a point of departure for a treatment of Western music in Japan in the 20th century. Adding to the complexity, the story straddles two academic disciplines: history and musicology. The academic literature thus varies in the extent to which it foregrounds the historical and social forces, trends and events on the one hand, or prioritises the mutual influences of Japanese and Western music, on the other. Finally, differences in approach and emphasis can also be seen in the work of Japanese and Western scholars.  Comprehensive references include Horiuchi Keizō’s Ongaku Gojūnenshi (A Fifty-year History of Music). Written in 1942, this encyclopaedic work spans the period and deals with all aspects of the introduction of Western music into Japan.38 A more recent, but equally all-inclusive, account is Ōmori Seitarō’s Nihon no Yōgaku: Perī Raikō kara 130-nen no Rekishi Dokyumento (Western Music in Japan: a 130-year Document History from the Arrival of Perry), Volume 1 of which deals with the Meiji Period.39 In English translation, Nomura Kōichi’s chapter entitled “Occidental Music,” in Japanese Music and Drama in the Meiji Era details the spread of Western music, again in its various settings and uses: military, religious and educational.40  Several scholars have written on the adoption of military marches and songs. These were the first forms of Western music to be heard in Japan in the modern era, particularly after the introduction of national conscription in 1871 when bands for the newly constituted army and navy were established to bolster discipline. Writing on the Western instructors  38 Keizō Horiuchi, Ongaku Gojūnenshi [A 50-year History of Music] (Tokyo: Masu Shobō, 1942). 39 Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku. 40 Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 451-485.  35  who taught military and later other forms of music, Nakamura Rihei’s Yōgaku Dōnyūsha no Kiseki: Nihon Kindai Yōgakushi Josetsu (Traces of Those who Introduced Western Music: an Introduction to the History of Western Music in Modern Japan) contains detailed biographical accounts of musicians like John William Fenton (1828-1890), and teachers such as Franz Eckert (1852-1916), Willem Sauvlet (1843-1902) and Luther Whiting Mason (1818-1896).41 The introduction of Western military and ceremonial music in the late-Tokugawa and early-Meiji periods and its relationship with traditional Japanese gagaku, the music of the Imperial court, is addressed by Tsukahara Yasuko in Jūkyūseiki no Nihon ni okeru Seiyō Ongaku no Juyō (The Reception of Western Music in 19th-Century Japan). Tsukahara views its reception in the 19th century in the perspective of the longue durée, seeing it as another form of ‘imported music’ similar to the Chinese court music that had entered the country over a millennium earlier.42 A number of scholars have focused on the introduction of Western music in the public school system, a vital avenue of adoption advanced by the Meiji modernisers. The Ministry of Education established a system of compulsory primary education in 1872 and, under the initiative of educator Isawa Shūji 伊澤修二 (1851-1917), a policy to promote the singing of Western-style songs known as shōka in primary schools was introduced in 1878. Ury Eppstein’s The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan concentrates on the introduction of shōka into schools, and documents the efforts undertaken by Isawa to convince the Ministry of Education of the desirability of introducing Western music in education.43 A recent biography of Isawa is Kokka to Ongaku: Izawa Shūji ga Mezashita Nihon Kindai (The State and Music: Izawa Shūji’s Ambitions for Japan’s Modernity) by Okunaka Yasuto. This describes Isawa’s Western-style education as well as his crucial participation in an 1875 mission to the United States during which he witnessed communal singing in schools and became convinced that the practice should be introduced in Japan to  41 Rihei Nakamura, Yōgaku Dōnyūsha no Kiseki: Nihon Kindai Yōgakushi Josetsu [Traces of Those who Introduced Western Music: an Introduction to the History of Western Music in Modern Japan] (Tōkyō: Tōsui Shobō, 1993). 42 Yasuko Tsukahara, Jūkyūseiki no Nihon ni okeru Seiyō Ongaku no Juyō [The Reception of Western Music in 19th-century Japan] (Tōkyō: Taga Shuppan, 1993), 6-7. 43 Ury Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music in Meiji Era Japan (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1995). 36  develop children’s speech organs, improve moral education and ultimately create a strong national identity.44  Sondra Wieland Howe’s biography of Isawa’s collaborator, Luther Whiting Mason, details the activities of the American missionary and teacher in Japan.45 Howe has written on the role of women in music pedagogy, drawing attention to the important contributions of Mason’s female assistants such as Nagai Shigeko.46 Shun’ichi Teshirogi writes about the fact that many shōka were adaptations of hymns which had been introduced by Mason and fellow missionaries.47 Mason became the first director of the Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari (Music Investigation Committee, MIC). Proposed by Isawa, this institution was established by the Ministry of Education in 1879 to explore how best to teach Western music in primary schools. In 1887, it became the TMS, whose mission was to train pedagogues and develop materials for the teaching of shōka.  Isawa’s real objective for setting up the MIC, however, was to go beyond mere assimilation of Western music. He wanted to create a “National Music” by reforming popular Japanese genres and blending these with Western music. Takenaka Tōru analyses Isawa’s quest to promote Western music in Japanese schools as a tool of modernisation. He addresses how Isawa reconciled his conflicting positions as an advocate of Western-style modernity and culture on the one hand, with a strong Japanese nationalist and later imperialist stance, on the other.48 A legacy of Isawa’s efforts was the creation of a physical and organisational infrastructure, including instruments and instructors that brought more Japanese into contact with Western music.   44 Okunaka, Kokka to Ongaku. See especially Chapters 3 and 4. 45 Sondra Wieland Howe, Luther Whiting Mason, International Music Educator (Warren, Mich: Harmonie Park Press, 1997). See Chapter 8. 46 Ibid., 84-88. An article that explores the pioneering role of women who trained overseas such as Nagai Shigeko, Tsuda Umeko, and Kōda Nobu, as well as the close connection between women and the musical activities of Christian missionaries is Sondra Wieland Howe, “The Role of Women in the Introduction of Western Music in Japan,” The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education 16, no. 2 (1995): 81-97, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40214860. 47 Shun’ichi Teshirogi, Sanbika / Seika to Nihon no Kindai: [Shiryōshū] Gaikokujin ni yoru Shoki Nihon no Sanbika ni Kan Suru Kenkyū Tsuki [Hymns / Sacred Songs and Japan's Modernisation: [Collection of Materials] Including Research by Foreigners Related to Japan’s First Hymns] (Tōkyō: Ongaku no Tomosha, 1999). 48 Tōru Takenaka, “Isawa Shūji's ‘National Music’: National Sentiment and Cultural Westernisation in Meiji Japan,” Itinerario 34, no. 3 (2010): 107, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S0165115310000719.  37  Isawa did not achieve his goal of blending Western music with Japanese genres to create a superior “National Music.” However, Western forms of music inevitably affected the subsequent development of traditional Japanese genres, and vice versa. Musicological studies have identified how the blending of elements from each style helped familiarise Japanese with Western music, but also made it difficult for the first Japanese composers, caught between tradition and modernity, to find their own voice. In a book chapter entitled “The Modern Music of Meiji Japan,” William Malm contends that shōka helped orient Japanese young people toward the harmonic elements of Western music. Acknowledging interesting mergers between traditional music and new ideas, he concludes that the lack of any real integration made it difficult for Japanese composers to be creative.49 In Yōgaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century, Luciana Galliano traces the adoption of Western music through the military and education system, and highlights the role of Isawa in ensuring that the curriculum allowed for a grounding in Western tonality and harmony. She explores how the first Japanese composers in the Western idiom struggled to balance the impulse toward individual creativity associated with modernity, with the dictates of traditional values and practices.50  The modification of Western music to modes more familiar to the Japanese certainly facilitated its adoption. In Doremi o Eranda Nihonjin (The Japanese who Chose Do-re-mi), Chiba Yūko, like Malm, details the story of the formal adoption of Western music and identifies a shift in Japanese musical sensibilities, and a warming toward Western music and functional harmony as a result of the introduction of shōka which were rendered easy-to-sing by employing the yonanuki pentatonic scale (the major scale minus the 4th and 7th intervals) and altering them to suit the rhythm of the Japanese language.51 This study shows that, alongside adaptation to the musical language itself, innovations that facilitated hybrid  49 William P. Malm, “CHAPTER VII. The Modern Music of Meiji Japan,” in Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, ed. Donald H. Shively (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 298-300, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9781400869015. 50 Luciana Galliano, Yōgaku: Japanese Music in the Twentieth Century, trans. Martin Mayes (Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2002), 37-39. Galliano describes how composers strove to learn and adopt the ‘rules’ of Western harmonies etc., and become ’highly skilled artisans’ at the very time when Western composers were moving away from those rules and becoming more exploratory by incorporating pentatonic and chromatic figures.  51 Chiba, Doremi, 106-111. Teshirogi also describes the relationship between hymns and shōka, including their modification to make them more palatable to the Japanese. See Teshirogi, Sanbika, 6-38. 38  musical practices, particularly in the home, were vital in making Western music more palatable to the Japanese public.  Informal Spread The formal, government-driven processes discussed so far were an indispensable part of the story of the spread of Western music in Meiji Japan. However, this is not the complete picture. Government efforts, particularly the mandating of shōka in primary schools, created an environment conducive to the adoption of Western music. Parallel to, and building on these initiatives was an informal process of diffusion. This has attracted less attention in the academic literature, although some of the scholarship presented above as well as other more recent studies have provided hints for potentially fruitful avenues of research and have prompted detailed investigations that point in this direction. These raise two central questions which drive this study: why did the Japanese eventually come to voluntarily adopt Western music, an aspect of Western material culture that was completely alien to them; and what were the specific processes by which this occurred?  One explanation of why the Japanese espoused Western music is that it was for extra-musical and instrumental reasons. In other words, Japan exemplified James Parakilas’ claim that Western classical music was adopted in non-Western cultures because: “…it retains its associations with European culture, with Western wealth and power.”52 Eppstein takes this view, noting that the adoption of Western music in Japan was primarily driven by priorities of the state and for pragmatic rather than aesthetic reasons.53 Nomura Kōichi agrees and, on the uses to which Western music was put, he writes: “…none of them was directly concerned with the music itself,” concluding that its importation was for “non-musical reasons.”54 He notes later that Western music had been accepted superficially as a trapping of Western culture, and was largely seen as a “plaything of the upper classes and the intelligentsia,” forced on the people through compulsory education.55  Some scholars have echoed Nomura’s contention that the adoption of Western music was related to class, implying that Japan exemplified Christopher Small’s claim that  52 James Parakilas, “Classical Music as Popular Music,” The Journal of Musicology 3, no. 1 (1984): 18, https://doi.org/10.2307/763659 53 Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music, 4-5. 54 Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 451-452. 55 Ibid., 491. 39  Western classical music was “…cultivated by the holders of power, first in Europe and later in its colonies and outposts.”56 Hiromu Nagahara contends that the hierarchical nature of Tokugawa society persisted into the Meiji era preventing the emergence of a truly egalitarian form of “National Music,” for which he blames Isawa’s failure to incorporate Japanese popular music (zokugaku) in his plan. A.K. Coaldrake echoes this, stating that Western music was for “well-to-do society in the 1880s and 1890s,” and that Isawa’s vision that music would spread to all echelons of society did not come to fruition.57  This elite agenda is epitomised in the enjoyment of Western music and dancing at the Rokumeikan, a venue specifically built to project an image of Japan as a cultured and civilised member of the family of nations where Japanese statesmen and diplomats could entertain foreign dignitaries and demonstrate their own sophisticated Western tastes. Tomita Hitoshi describes the venue as: “Japan, but not Japan. It was the world of pseudo-Westernisation.”58 This cynicism was voiced by a fictional character in Miyake Kaho’s short-story “Warbler in the Grove.” In a conversation between members of the Ritsumeikan set, the female protagonist, Shinohara Namiko, confesses: “All of us are now doing what we can so as not to be overlooked by the civilised nations. We apply ourselves tirelessly to those soirees.”59 However, Western music was clearly more than a tool for the elites to project an idealised image of the country. The art form did eventually gain a foothold in the Japanese imagination. Nomura attributes its acceptance to Japan’s achieving the status of a modern industrialised and militarised nation in the 1890s, and concedes that the general public eventually “…came to lose its former antipathy towards it [Western music], and even showed some signs of responding to it.”60  A call to investigate reasons why Western music transcended its practical uses and eventually appealed to Japanese people has been made in recent research. Answering her own question of whether the introduction of Western music in Japan had been successful,  56 Small, Musicking, 220. 57 A. K. Coaldrake, “Building a New Musical Tradition: The Sōgakudō and the Introduction of Western Music in Japan,” Musicology Australia 13, no. 1 (1990): 39, https://doi.org/10.1080/08145857.1990.10420655. 58 Hitoshi Tomita, Rokumeikan: Gi Seiyō-ka no Sekai [Rokumeikan: The World of Pseudo-Westernisation] (Tōkyō: Hakusuisha, 1984), 160. 59 Rebecca L. Copeland, “MIYAKE KAHO (1868-1944),” in The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan, ed. Rebecca Copeland and Melek Ortabasi (New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2006), 99, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.7312/cope13774-004. 60 Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 491. 40  Margaret Mehl responds in the affirmative noting that, at least in the narrow sense, it “…cannot be separated from the political, military, economic and social reforms enacted by the Meiji government.”61 However, she contends that its adoption for such objectives alone does not account for the enthusiasm with which it came to be received. She cites Jürgen Osterhammel’s claim that “…no one forced the Egyptians to found newspapers, and the Japanese to listen to Gounod or Verdi,” to underscore her own argument that the taste for Western music was acquired “independently of imperial or domestic official political agendas.” 62  Examining the attraction of Western music and other forms of culture for ex-samurai Christian converts, particularly those on the losing side of the Restoration, Takenaka Tōru raises the question of why they came to embrace the art form.63 Chiba Yūko also asks how and why the Japanese public in time welcomed Western music, an ‘idiom’ utterly different from traditional Japanese music.64 As well as alluding to the changes to the language of the music noted above, she suggests that the Japanese interest in Western music emerged from a sense of akogare (admiration or longing) based on associations with other positive aspects of the West, in the same way that Japanese respect for US prosperity after World War II ignited a love of Rock and Roll.65 While this explanation has echoes of Parikalas’ claim, the emphasis is less on a recognition of the power discrepancy, and more on a genuine affection for Western music. The singing of Christian hymns, a musical activity that was available to ordinary Japanese, is another example of this. Elizabeth May contends that the simplicity of Protestant music “appealed to the Japanese youth avid for American culture.”66 This study shows how Western music in its variety of forms came to be enjoyed by ordinary Japanese as it became more familiar to them. Before it could appeal to the Japanese public, Western  61 Margaret Mehl, “Western Art Music in Japan,” 211-212. 62 The reference is to Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2009): 82, transl., Margaret Mehl, cited in Mehl, “Western Art Music,” 212. 63 Tōru Takenaka, “Foreign Sound as Compensation: Social and Cultural Factors in the Reception of Western Music in Meiji Japan (1867-1912),” in Floodgates Technologies, Cultural (Ex)Change and the Persistence of Place, ed. Susan (Susan V.) Ingram, Cornelia Szabó-Knotik, and Markus Reisenleitner (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang., 2006), 185-188. 64 Chiba, Doremi, 11-13. 65 Ibid., 115 66 Elizabeth May and the University of California, The Influence of the Meiji Period on Japanese Children's Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), 35. 41  music first had to become accessible, leading to the second question: what were the processes by which this informal spread occurred? Extra-musical motives lay behind the formal, government-led adoption of Western music. However, as Mehl and others contend, this alone was not enough to account for its spread. While acknowledging the long-lasting antipathy towards Western music, something that is stressed by both Chiba and Ōmori, this study identifies alternative vectors of spread beyond the formal top-down initiatives.67 The government’s actions created an infrastructure conducive to the adoption of Western music. However, individuals affiliated to non-state entities such as the Christian missions and the commercial sector, particularly instrument shops, were just as important in familiarising the art form by bringing it closer to the daily lives of Japanese people. This study gives historical context to Bonnie C. Wade’s broad claims that the state-building uses of Western music were founded on governmental, educational, industrial and commercial elements of modern infrastructure which included school songs, instructional materials, the domestic production of European instruments and music for wartime. The primary focus of Wade’s ethnomusicological study of living Japanese composers is the 20th century and her historical account of its spread in the Meiji period is cursory and incomplete.68  Scholars have identified some specific social factors that facilitated the spread of Western music by this informal route. Chiba notes the importance of increased contact with foreigners, particularly in Yokohama, public performances of commercial bands, the accessibility of military band songs, and music used by the advertising industry and in Christian churches and church schools.69 Mehl touches on the subject of diffusion through amateur musicmaking by Westerners in places like Yokohama, the emergence of commercial bands playing at a variety of occasions and venues such as hotels, parks and department stores, the appearance of specialised music magazines, such as the Ongaku Zasshi (Music Magazine), the popularity of military songs during the foreign wars, as well as “informal social and musical exchanges,” such as concerts and other gatherings.70 This study  67 See Chiba, Doremi, 31-42, and Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku, 94-95. 68 Bonnie C. Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 6-13, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=1573580. 69 Chiba, Doremi, 113-114. 70 Margaret Mehl, Not by Love Alone: The Violin in Japan, 1850-2010 (Copenhagen: The Sound Book Press, 2014), 30-37. 42  considers these factors and others in a systematic way, identifying connections between them and showing how they were related to both the spread of Western music, and Meiji modernity more broadly.  Writing about the growing popularity of the violin during the late Meiji Period, Mehl points out the lack of attention given to the informal spread of Western music through “Unofficial and informal channels, including amateur activities by foreigners and Japanese….”71 She uses the word “informal” to describe this parallel type of diffusion. Ōmori Seitarō couches it in different, but analogous, terms. In a chapter entitled “The Bifurcation of the Development of Western Music in the Meiji Period,” Ōmori observes that the reception of Western music diverged into two streams: a main stream which he labels kanzokukei (official), and a tributary which he terms minkankei (of the people).72 One example of the latter is the spread of Western music by commercial bands, the importance of which is also noted by both Chiba and Nomura.73 In Burasu Bando no Shakaishi: Gungakutai kara Utaban e (A Social History of Brass Bands: from Military Ensembles to Song Accompaniment), Kaniʼchi Abe brings out the distinction between the activities of these commercial bands and the government-led introduction of music into education for the sake of instilling discipline. While the latter was largely focused on stringed instruments and vocal music, brass band music was a form of popular entertainment for consumption by the masses at ‘events’ and ‘celebrations’.74 This study shows how commercial bands not only promoted the informal spread of Western music, but also constituted a modern form of community which provided opportunities to the musicians involved. Methodological Approach As mentioned throughout this Introduction, the study adopts a microhistorical methodology. In this respect, it takes the lead from Mehl who has advocated a biographical approach to analyse the dynamics of informal spread, studying the process through the lives of individuals. She has showcased the Kōda sisters, Nobu and Kō who became acclaimed violinists, as well as the Shikama brothers from Sendai who promoted the spread of  71 Margaret, Mehl, “Japan’s Early Twentieth-Century Violin Boom,” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 7, no. 1 (2010): 24, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409800001130. 72 Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku, 57. 73 Ibid., 56-58, Chiba, Doremi, 114, and Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 489. 74 Kaniʼchi Abe [and four others], Burasu Bando no Shakaishi: Gungakutai kara Utaban e [A Social History of Brass Bands: from Military Ensembles to Song Accompaniment], Dai 1-han (Tōkyō: Seikyūsha, 2001), 34-35. 43  Western music after graduating from the MIC. Not only did the brothers provide a link between Tokyo and the provinces but, by establishing Japan’s first music magazine, Ongaku Zasshi, one of them, Totsuji, also created a nationwide network of enthusiasts.75 According to Mehl, these individuals, whom she labels “cultural brokers,” created a “buzz” around Western music and helped make Japanese more receptive to it.76 She notes that official, top-down routes for the spread of Western music in Tokyo have been widely studied, leaving a gap in research into local and regional processes.77 Mehl concludes: “Government measures provided structures within which individuals like the Shikama brothers could pursue their own agendas; and it was their enthusiasm and zeal that helped prepare the fertile ground for the further absorption of Western music.”78 This current work casts the net much further afield in its selection of individuals to encompass a wider section of the public than the “cultural brokers” Mehl identifies. An investigation into the informal spread of Western music from the bottom up and across such a wide range of themes necessarily requires a rich and diverse set of sources based on an eclectic mixture of individual accounts. As mentioned previously, protagonists in this study include not only musicians, students and teachers who were attracted to the aesthetic aspects of Western music, but also those who had a less direct relationship with the music itself. Broadening the scope in this way unearths unexpected connections between the different aspects of the spread of Western music, and shows how these fit within the context of Meiji modernity.  The primary sources used in this study comprise published and unpublished accounts, including diaries, personal memoirs and autobiographies. In the cases involving composers, conductors and other practitioners who became active in the 20th century, the memoirs were written several decades after the events they describe. Other sources include published articles which appeared in English- and Japanese-language newspapers, journals  75 See respectively Margaret Mehl, “A Man's Job? The Kōda Sisters, Violin Playing, and Gender Stereotypes in the Introduction of Western Music in Japan,” Women's History Review 21, no. 1 (2012): 101-120, https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2012.645675; and Margaret Mehl, “Between the Global, the National and the Local in Japan: Two Musical Pioneers from Sendai,” Itinerario 41, no. 2 (2017): 305-325, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S0165115317000389. 76 Mehl, “Between the Global,” 317. 77 Ibid., 306 78 Ibid., 319. 44  and magazines during the Meiji, Taishō and Shōwa periods. Some of the primary research was conducted by interviewing local historians and experts, as well as relatives of the featured individuals.  Chapter 1 sets out the background prior to the introduction of Western music in Japan. It shows that throughout the Meiji period, a persistent gap in musical sensibilities, doubts about the suitability and desirability of Western music in the country, and scepticism over the proficiency and authenticity of Japanese performers continued, making it all the more remarkable that the art form was able to spread. Among the first non-governmental channels for Western music were Protestant missions and affiliated schools. Chapter 2 introduces three contrasting case studies of individuals who encountered music in its Christian setting. Through these, it considers themes such as music and pedagogy in missionary schools, the position of music in the religious worldviews of ex-samurai converts, and the role of hymns in the introduction of Western music. In Chapters 3 and 4, the focus is on the life of a shop, Jūjiya Gakkiten, which started as a Christian bookstore, but later specialised in selling musical instruments, scores and instruction manuals. Chapter 3 considers the shop’s establishment, and the network of pioneers who drove its business expansion and diversification. It considers the importance of the cosmopolitan district of Ginza in fostering an atmosphere of entrepreneurship. The subject of Chapter 4 is one of Jūjiya Gakkiten’s  most iconic products, the shikōkin. This musical device exemplifies the Japanese experimental approach to the adoption of Western music. The shikōkin is considered alongside a contrasting case study involving modifications made to a traditional Japanese custom which centred on an instrument called the ichigenkin. Juxtaposing these distinct case studies shows different ways in which the Japanese adopted elements of Western musical culture and adapted them creatively. The commercial success of Jūjiya Gakkiten made Western music more accessible to the Japanese in their everyday lives. Chapter 5 considers the importance of domestic musicmaking in the story of its spread. Advertised and promoted alongside other forms of entertainment, Western musicmaking is positioned as part of a burgeoning consumer culture. This chapter also explores its significance for a group of young people who went on to become successful in the world of music as a consequence of their encounters with Western music in and around the home. Chapter 6 explores new types of sociability 45  engendered by Western music. Again, contrasting case studies are used. One shows a cohesive community made up of commercial band members active around Tokyo and Yokohama, the other a more nebulous, but similarly motivated, group of young music enthusiasts. Finally, the Conclusion includes a section which puts forward a case for further research into the emotional effects of Western music on this younger generation of practitioners at a time when new ideas about individualism and self-expression were circulating.    46       Chapter 1 - A Musical Divide  In her diary entry for July 14, 1876, Clara Whitney recalled a koto and vocal performance she witnessed at the home of a Mr. Ono: The girl played very nicely and then began to sing. Ye gods, deliver us from Japanese singing! She squalled and yelled and mumbled and sang fearfully through her nose. But I don’t believe Japanese singing sounds to us as badly as ours does to them, for most of their singing is done in a nasal monotone, and sadly, while ours is all slam-bang-and-yell in the upper notes. In church I have seen Japanese trying their best to reach E flat but in spite of screwing up their foreheads, etc., they never succeed. However, this was better music than I often hear.1 Whitney’s anecdote encapsulates both sides of a musical divide. It illustrates a belief shared by Western residents and Japanese natives that their respective musical sensibilities were poles apart and their musical cultures incompatible. Evidence of this perceived chasm in taste persisted throughout the Meiji Period despite the gradual diffusion of Western music among the Japanese population explored in this study. This impasse was expressed succinctly in October 1878 by the British traveller and writer, Isabella Bird (1831-1904): “A gulf not to be spanned divides the harmonies of the East from those of the West….”2  Before investigating different facets of the informal spread of Western music during the Meiji period, it is important to first set the scene. The aims of this chapter are to illustrate the perceived aesthetic, cultural and social barriers to Western music and, by doing so, put its adoption and spread into perspective. This serves to underscore just how remarkable it was that the Japanese came to accept this alien art form in a relatively short space of time. While opinions on the adoption of Western music presented in the Japanese print media are shown, much of the commentary in this chapter comes from Western  1 Clara Whitney, Clara’s Diary: An American Girl in Meiji Japan, ed. M. William Steele and Tamiko Ichimata, third printing (Tokyo: Kodansha Internat, 1984), 92-93.  2 Isabella Lucy Bird, “LETTER L,” in Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: An Account of Travels in the Interior, Including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikkô and Isé, Cambridge Library Collection - Travel and Exploration in Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 207, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511709845.024. 48  sources, both individual accounts, and articles and reviews in the English-language media. The direct responses of Japanese individuals to their encounters with Western music in different contexts will be explored across the rest of this dissertation. The chapter begins by revealing Western residents’ responses to the auditory backdrop of Japan soon after their arrival in the mid-19th century. It shows a variety of reactions on encountering Japanese music, reactions that ranged from disinterest and incomprehension to irritation and disgust. Next, it illustrates the mirror image, namely Japanese responses to Western music. By considering wider cultural and social perspectives, the chapter then highlights persistent scepticism about the place of Western music in Japan. This was largely based on prejudicial ideas that Japanese practitioners lacked proficiency, creativity and authenticity. Finally, the chapter demonstrates that, despite these barriers, Western residents became gradually more accustomed to Japanese participation in performance, and the Japanese musicians themselves more assured. Initially confined to the fringes of the world of Western musicmaking, Japanese performers became more central to it. The rich diversity of genres of Western music and wide range of occasions for which it was played, as well as the variety of ways in which Japanese individuals interacted with Western music, illustrate a complex picture of acculturation and adaptation. To fully understand this, the chapter concludes, it is necessary to look beyond formal government-led adoption and consider the informal processes involved in the spread of Western music in Japan.  Aesthetic Barriers The soundscape of Meiji Japan was strange to the ears of Western visitors and residents. Kerim Yasar notes that the ambient speech and music that Westerners encountered were devoid of context or syntactical meaning and listeners would therefore have been drawn primarily to the raw sound stimuli.3 He provides the example of long-term residents, Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) and Edward Sylvester Morse (1838-1925) who chronicled miscellaneous sounds that were novel and unfamiliar to them: the “clickety- 3 Kerim Yasar, Electrified Voices: How the Telephone, Phonograph, and Radio Shaped Modern Japan, 1868-1945 (New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2018), 60-61, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.7312/yasa18712. 49  clack” of geta clogs, and the “cries and grunts” of workmen plying their trade. Isabella Bird presents an auditory snapshot:  On one side a man recited Buddhist prayers in a high key; on the other a girl was twanging a samisen, a species of guitar; the house was full of talking and splashing, drums and tomtoms were beaten outside; there were street cries innumerable, and the whistling of the blind shampooers, and the resonant clap of the fire watchman who perambulates all Japanese villages, and beats two pieces of wood together in token of his vigilance, were intolerable. It was a life of which I knew nothing, and the mystery was more alarming than attractive.4 This “alarming” cacophony included sounds ranging from the purely percussive to the semi-musical. Westerners encountering performances of Japanese music, and Japanese hearing Western music, found their experiences similarly baffling and in many cases unpleasant. This section illustrates and characterises reactions on both sides of the musical divide. The responses of Westerners on hearing Japanese music have been documented in the academic literature. For example, William Anthony Sheppard covers the gamut of reactions during the Meiji period.5 Kerim Yasar also cites Westerners’ views on encountering Japanese music as part of the ambient soundscape. He contrasts their derogatory comments about traditional Japanese music with Japanese elites’ genuine attempts to foster an appreciation of Western music, and attributes this imbalance to the power differential between Japan and the West.6 These accounts draw on the archival sources which contain a wide range of examples that illustrate the attitudes of Westerners to Japanese music. Western residents’ reactions to traditional Japanese music varied. However, as seen in the quotations from the accounts of Whitney and Bird above, they were largely negative. Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935), a professor at Tokyo Imperial University was scathing in  4 Bird, Unbeaten Tracks, cited in Yasar, Electrified Voices, 63-64. 5 William Anthony Sheppard, Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2019), 10-37, https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190072704.001.0001. 6 Yasar, Electrified Voices, 58-61. 50  his condemnation and drew attention to what he saw as a lack of engagement with, and interest in music among the population:  Be the scale what it may, the effect of Japanese music is, not to soothe, but to exasperate beyond all endurance, the European breast….Perhaps this is the reason why the Japanese themselves are so indifferent to the subject. One never hears a party of Japanese talking seriously about music; musical questions are never discussed in the newspapers…a Japanese Bayreuth is unthinkable.7 Fellow academic, Edward Sylvester Morse, expressed a similar level of distaste: “From a foreigner’s standpoint the nation appears to be devoid of what we call an ear for music. Their music seems to be of the rudest kind.” He picked out for criticism a perceived “absence of harmony,” noting: “They all sing in unison. They have no voice, and they make the most curious squeaks and grunts….”8 However, as an academic who was inquisitive about many aspects of Japanese culture, Morse made perfunctory attempts to understand the country’s music. After witnessing musicians at a temple in Ōmori in September 1877, he wrote: “I listened in vain to detect a strain of what we regard as music and gave up in despair; I not only could not understand the music, but was equally ignorant of what it was all about.”9 Like Chamberlain, Morse also believed that the Japanese lacked an interest in music, and he considered this strange given the allure of other elements of the culture:  ...one never hears home or family singing, no college chorus, no groups of men singing or serenading on the street….This is the more extraordinary in that their art, their manners, their love of flowers, their children’s games even, all appeal to us.10    7 Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan, of Cambridge Library Collection - Travel and Exploration in Asia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 250-251, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/CBO9781107448285. 8 Edward Sylvester Morse, Japan Day by Day, 1877, 1878-79, 1882-83 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917), Volume 1, 115. 9 Ibid., 301-302. 10 Ibid., 380. 51  Recasting his frustration as hope, he expressed optimism that Japan’s music might “ultimately prove to have merits of which we get no hint at present” and eventually come to be revered in the same way as its visual art, which was once considered unfamiliar and strange.11  Morse’s comments illustrate an interesting distinction, namely that Westerners’ evaluations of Japan’s visual and auditory aesthetic cultures contrasted greatly, and that Western residents and visitors encountered two types of Japanese exoticism: one attractive, the other repellent. The fondness for the country’s visual arts, architecture and fashion is well documented. The most recognised case of Japanese cultural forms becoming not only palatable but desirable in the West involved artefacts that fell under the umbrella term ‘Japonisme’, a category of arts and designs with a Japanese aesthetic that had been created for a sophisticated Western viewing public and customer. Japonisme became popular particularly after it had been exhibited at the international expositions in Europe and the United States in the second half of the 19th century. Ignacio Adriasola writes about how the “exhibitionary regime” played a vital role in creating “Japanese art” as a category.12 Sartorial design was also highly revered by Westerners both inside and outside Japan. Sally A. Hastings points out that Western visitors to the Rokumeikan, for example, so admired the kimono that they were against their Japanese female hosts donning Western attire, and preferred them instead to remain an Oriental “other.”13  The reasons for these divergent reactions are unclear. It could possibly be because the visual allows for silent appraisal of the “other,” whereas sound is more confrontational and allows the “other” more agency in how it is perceived. Certainly, the international expositions were influential in popularising Japanese visual culture overseas. Japanese music did not feature at these events and therefore Westerners were not exposed to it. However, an argument can be made that distaste for Japanese music was hardwired. Kerim recognises this point. As an explanation for why many Westerners showed an interest in  11 Ibid., 401-402. 12 Ignacio Adriasola, “Japan’s Venice: The Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the ‘Pseudo-Objectivity’ of the International,” Archives of Asian Art 67, no. 2 (2017): 213, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27097978. 13 Sally A. Hastings, “Chapter 5. A Dinner Party Is Not a Revolution: Space, Gender, and Hierarchy in Meiji Japan,” in Manners and Mischief: Gender, Power, and Etiquette in Japan, ed. Jan Bardsley, and Laura Miller (Berkeley: University of California Press 2011), 111, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1525/9780520949492.   52  visual artefacts such as textiles and ukiyo-e woodblock prints while exhibiting only limited tolerance for its “auditory culture,” he employs a contemporary analogy that contrasts Westerners’ positive response to East Asian food, cinema, or literature with the largely negative response to the region’s music. Music is, he contends, the form of expression least able to cross cultural barriers.14 Nevertheless, it did, in time, traverse them in the opposite direction and this study shows how this difficult transition occurred.  Accounts of Japanese reactions to Western music, written either by the Japanese themselves or vicariously by Western observers, appear less frequently in the literature on the adoption of Western music in Meiji-era Japan. Taking the same view as Parikalas and others mentioned in the Introduction that European wealth and power attracted the Japanese to Western music, Galliano notes that the Japanese adopted Western music for its prestige value but that “the first performances of Western music were met with bewilderment.”15 Chiba Yūko stresses inherent differences in scale, instrumentation and voicing, and illustrates, with examples, how Japanese and foreigners perceived each other’s music as vastly different both before and during the Meiji Period.16  A number of Westerners reported on Japanese reactions to Western music. Clara Whitney’s diary entry quoted at the beginning of this chapter is one such example. Another is an account by Basil Chamberlain of a Japanese audience attending a performance by an Italian opera troupe as part of a play at a Yokohama theatre. According to Chamberlain, the audience reacted to the performance with much mirth, and were: “…seized with a wild fit of hilarity at the high notes of the prima donna…[and]… laughed at the absurdities of European singing till their sides shook and the tears rolled down their cheeks.”17 Writing about a recital of what she terms “some of our music,” Isabella Bird described a decidedly more subdued reaction by the Japanese audience who were politely appreciative yet unenthusiastic. According to Bird, they showed a distinct lack of emotion despite exhibiting signs of being “all well-bred and keenly intelligent.”18  14 Yasar, Electrified Voices, 60-61. 15 Galliano, Yōgaku, 33. 16 Chiba, Doremi, 11-13. 17 Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 345. 18 Bird, “LETTER L,” 208. 53  While demonstrating different responses - from unrestrained ridicule to stony indifference - what these observations reveal is a lack of understanding. Morse inquired as to why the Japanese were not favourably disposed to Western music: “Later I learned from a student that our music was not music at all to them, [sic] He could n’t [sic] understand why we cut it off by jerks; to him it was “Jig, jig, jig, jig, jig, jigger, jig, jig”!”19 The constant and repeating rhythm and the regular division of time into bars was, like vertical harmony, an aspect of Western music that was absent in Japanese music.  Articles in the vernacular press picked up on  Westerners’ and Japanese antagonism to the place of Western music in Japan, and doubts over its future prospects there. A piece on the subject of Japanese exceptionalism by Dr. Revon, former professor of Law at the Imperial University, Tokyo, appeared in the Taiyō in 1900 and was summarised in the JWM. With regard to music, Revon’s observations align with the assessments of Whitney, Bird and Morse. He wrote that the Japanese saw “our music” as “noisy” and “our solemn and precise dancing” as akin to “the diversions of barbarians.”20  The accusation that the Japanese lacked interest in music, specifically Western music, was also a theme taken up in the Japanese press. An article in the magazine Keisei summarised in the JWM in January 1904 reported a meeting between the Russian Minister of War and the former Japanese Prime Minister, then President of the Privy Council of Japan, Itō Hirobumi 伊藤博文 (1841-1909). The Russian Minister was pressed by Itō as to what he considered a defect of the Japanese, to which he replied curtly: “The entire absence of a taste for music.”21 A February 1898 edition of the JWM carried the summary of a piece from a recent edition of the periodical, Nihonjin, which was critical about Japan’s lack of achievements in literature, art and music. The latter, it claimed: “…fares no better than art. There is no real progress in this accomplishment, because there is no real taste for it.” No doubt referring to government attempts to promote Western music, it continued:  19 Morse, Japan Day by Day, Volume 1, 115. 20 Japan Mail Office, The Japan Weekly Mail: A Review of Japanese Commerce, Politics, Literature and Art (Tokyo: Japan Mēru Shinbunsha, [1870]-1915), September 29, 1900, 332.  21 Ibid., January 16, 1904, 66-67. 54  “Various have been the efforts to stir up enthusiasm on the subject of music, but the results have been most discouraging.”22 In the same month, the JWM published a summary of a review of the year 1897 that had originally appeared in the January edition of Teikoku Bungaku. The article contained the following remarks about the persistent lack of popularity of Western music: “The almost universal indifference to foreign music has for a long time been most evident. Last year was no exception to preceding years.”23 The review of 1898 published a year later was similarly dismissive of Japanese interest in Western music: Though numerous concerts were given in Tokyo during the year, it cannot be said that anything like a general interest in music has been awakened. The press notices of the efforts of amateurs and professors show little real discernment and usually consist of a string of laudatory epithets.24 These articles repeat the accusations made by individuals that the Japanese lacked interest in Western music. The picture they painted of the outlook for the adoption of the art form was a bleak one, all the more so because the efforts that had been made to “stir up enthusiasm” were viewed as futile. No reason for why this might have been the case is proffered, leaving only the explanation that musical tastes and preferences do not easily cross cultural barriers as discussed earlier. The Japanese public’s stubborn resistance to Western music lasted throughout and beyond the period, even after Western music had started to gain traction in the country. Chiba Yūko acknowledges a continued proclivity for traditional Edo-period music, mainly for the shamisen, in the popular imagination well into the 1920s.25  The Japanese had little they could draw on in their musical traditions that could prepare them for their encounter with Western music. This can be contrasted with the contemporaneous adoption of modern Western sports such as baseball and football. Allan Guttmann argues that this was facilitated by the fact that, since the Tokugawa period, the ‘modern’ elements of such sports had already been present in Kyūdō 弓道, traditional  22 Ibid., February 5, 1898, 135-136.  23 Ibid., February 26, 1898, 210.  24 Ibid., March 4, 1899, 221-222. 25 Chiba, Doremi, 37-40. 55  Japanese archery. These were the standardisation of targets so that they were equal and fair to all competitors, and the quantification and recording of results that could be compared across space and time.26 Western music, on the other hand, had no such correlates in traditional Japanese music and, as this study will show, despite top-down efforts, it was therefore able to spread only through a process of gradual familiarisation, during which it was brought closer to the daily lives of Japanese people.  Social And Cultural Barriers In addition to the aesthetic gulf separating the two different concepts and practices of music, cultural and social barriers also played a role in preventing the smooth spread of Western music in Meiji Japan. Mutual misunderstandings and prejudices acted as a hindrance to its adoption. While maintaining an air of cordiality, Westerners saw themselves as the gatekeepers of Western music and were critical of Japanese participation on a number of counts. These included Orientalist notions that physical deficiencies and a rigid adherence to technique at the expense of creativity precluded Japanese from truly mastering Western music, as well as ideas that both Japanese audiences and musicians lacked sophistication. These opinions were based on the implicit assumption that Japanese musicmaking lacked authenticity, a belief held not only by Westerners, but also some Japanese participants themselves.  To understand the cultural gap separating the Japanese public from the actual practice of Western music in Japan, it is useful to investigate those who straddled it: the Japanese singers and musicians who participated in public performances in Yokohama and Tokyo. This section examines how their treatment by Western commentators and their own reflections on their place in that world reveal some of the ways in which they were held at a distance. It draws on reviews and opinion pieces in the English-language press which reported on the “efforts of amateurs and professors” as alluded to in the Teikoku Bungaku article quoted above. It also considers the personal accounts of TMS students who later became composers, musicians and educators. Many of the performances took place in Yokohama, where the Western music scene was more vibrant than neighbouring Tokyo. Mehl, Chiba and others point out the importance of the port city as a point of contact where  26 Allen Guttmann, “Targeting Modernity: Archery and the Modernization of Japan,” Sport History Review 35, no. 1 (2004): 20-31, https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.35.1.20. 56  Japanese could become involved in Western music.27 The largely unfavourable reception of Japanese musicians in this world of musicmaking reveals some of the difficulties facing its spread.  One allegation made by Western observers was that Japanese musicians were constrained by their physiques. Attending “a public exhibition” of a class in Western-style singing, Morse described the efforts of the young Japanese students as follows: “Their voices lacked vim and snap that are characteristic of our school-children, yet there is no doubt that the Japanese could be taught to sing in our way….”28 This remark typifies a recurring criticism. While acknowledging their potential, Japanese singers and instrumentalists were portrayed as tainted with innate physical weaknesses that would prevent them from ever fully mastering Western music, or at least learning to sing or play to the same level as Western performers. Similar criticisms appeared in the print media. An article in the JWM reviewing a concert given by The Gakuyūkai (School Friendship Association) in Ueno Park, Tokyo on July 4, 1896 praised the performance of the band. However, it continued:  Probably three or four generations must come and go before the Japanese develop lung power sufficient to produce a rich volume of sound with wind instruments, or musical fire fervent enough to rouse a responsive glow in an audience. We can not [sic] say that signs of progress in that direction are very apparent, but, on the other hand, there is nothing to warrant hopelessness.29  The review of a concert in Ueno Park on December 5, 1900 given by the Tokyo Academy of Music (TMS) fluctuated between praise and condemnation. After commending the performance, the reviewer lambasted the singers’ inadequate vocal strength, a deficiency that was, in his view, unlikely to improve during the lifetime of the current generation of singers. The problem was that: “…the average Japanese voice is emphatically wanting in volume and timbre.”30    27 Mehl, Not by Love Alone, 113-114.  28 Morse, Japan Day by Day, Vol. 2, 225. 29 Japan Mail Office, JWM, July 11, 1896, 37.  30 Ibid., December 15, 1900, 624.  57  The vocalist at a concert at the Tokyo Academy of Music on March 19, 1905 was criticised in similar fashion:  The only solo was a song by Miss Shibata, a young lady not often previously heard. She obtained very hearty and well-deserved applause, but her voice was characterized by the lack of power usually observed in all Japanese voices when the rendering of foreign music is attempted. One is inclined to think that some generations may be needed to remedy this, for the peculiar Japanese habit of supressing the voice in singing has perhaps created by heredity some defect of the organs of volume…the same remark applied to the choruses given last Saturday: the execution was nearly perfect, but the result lacked ring and timbre.31  This supposed deficiency of “vim and snap” and “ring and timbre” did not only apply to vocalists and wind ensembles. The acclaimed violinist and a regular performer on the stages of Tokyo and Yokohama, Kōda Kō, was not exempt from criticism. A review of “Professor Heydrich’s Concert,” which took place in January 1905, first praised the violinist and then attempted to attribute her hesitancy to perform an encore to heavy “…demands upon her physical strength alone….”32   Isawa Shūji had discerned a connection between bodily strength and the performance of Western music. One of his original objectives for promoting mandatory singing lessons in primary schools was to fortify the voices of young pupils. Isawa had been impressed by the energetic singing of school children he witnessed when travelling in the United States, and believed that communal singing could help to develop the voices and physically strengthen the vocal chords of Japanese children to the same level as the youth in “civilised” countries.33   31 Ibid., March 25, 1905, 314.  32 Ibid., January 28, 1905, 96.  33 Okunaka, Kokka to Ongaku, 178-179. After conducting a scientific inquiry, Isawa came to the conclusion that the methods that would achieve this aim were Bell’s visible speech and Mason’s school singing. See Ibid., 228-229. The view that insufficient physical strength impeded Japanese musicians’ ability to fully master Western art music has parallels in the world of 20th-century jazz. E. Taylor Atkins cites Japanese jazz writer Segawa Masahisa, who made the observation that Japanese jazz outfits could boast relatively few trumpeters because of a deficiency in strength and lung capacity. See E. Taylor Atkins, “The Japanese Jazz Artist and the Authenticity Complex,” in Blue Nippon Authenticating Jazz in Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 40, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1215/9780822380030-001. 58  Criticism on the grounds of physical shortcomings essentialised and infantilised Japanese musicians and singers, and implied that, despite their own effort and skill, they would inevitably be held back by these immutable characteristics. This Orientalist point of view pervaded other aspects of Meiji society. Tarazawa Yūki notes that, in the health-reform movement near the end of the period, “Japanese bodies” were designated as inferior in size, health and strength compared to “Western bodies.” Western physicians blamed nurture rather than nature and criticised unhealthy daily bodily, sartorial and dietary habits in particular. Their diagnoses caused unease among Japanese officials, and those who had travelled to the West and had seen “superior” Western physiques at first-hand sought to redress the problem. This concern was compounded by the faith that Japan’s leaders had in Social Darwinism, convincing them that poor health and lack of vitality would jeopardise Japan’s standing in the competition between nations.34 This last point is underscored in Nakayama Izumi and Francesca Bray’s study of the perceived physical inferiority of Japanese children in the Meiji period.35 The application of this same way of thinking - shared by Westerners and Japanese - to the evaluation of Japanese singers and instrumentalists of Western music exemplifies a pervasive prejudice and scepticism about the suitability of the art form in Japan.  Even when Japanese performers were deemed physically capable of performing Western music, criticisms were levelled at a perceived inability to bring creativity to their performances. A review of a performance by the amateur orchestra the Meiji Ongaku Kai 明治音楽会 (Meiji Music Society) on March 11, 1899 ran as follows:  As to the performers they showed an earnestness of purpose worthy of all praise. Intonation and timbre generally good, the selections performed were done with a mechanical and technical precision remarkable in beginners. Courage, gentlemen! press on! You have overcome the initial  34 Yūki Terazawa, Knowledge, Power, and Women’s Reproductive Health in Japan, 1690-1945 (Cham: Springer International Publishing AG, 2018), 180-184, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73084-4. 35 Izumi Nakayama, and Francesca Bray, “Gender, Health, and the Problem of “Precocious Puberty” in Meiji Japan,” in Gender, Health, and History in Modern East Asia, ed. Izumi Nakayama and Angela Ki Che Leung (Aberdeen: Hong Kong University Press, 2017), 37-38, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1w1vmsb.6. 59  difficulties, and possess the key which will unlock for you the mighty thoughts of the great tone poets of the West.36 This excerpt encapsulates Western convictions of the superiority of its own music and the culture underpinning it. Juxtaposed with “the mighty thoughts of the great tone poets of the West,” the phrases “mechanical and technical precision” and “earnestness of purpose” were veiled criticisms implying that the Japanese musicians strove to perfect their craft but lacked a natural flair for this vaunted music. Nomura Kōichi is sceptical that Japanese musicians were able to truly understand the Germanic musical tradition of Bach and Beethoven, and suggests that they adopted a cautious approach to mastering music and that what mattered most was “acquiring the skills to play the notes without making a mistake.”37 A comparable situation can be seen in assessments of current day Japanese musicians of Western classical music, and of jazz musicians in the early-20th century.38  Westerners’ general perceptions of Japanese output in visual arts and crafts can again provide some comparative context. As discussed earlier, the Japanese visual arts were generally treated favourably by Western commentators partly because of their success at the 19th-century expositions. This fondness is reflected in positive articles in the English-language print media.39 However, as with music, the suggestion was made that the Japanese also lacked creativity in the visual arts. In 1896, an article reviewing exhibitions in Ueno Park  36 Japan Mail Office, JWM, March 18, 1899, 269.  37 Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 494.  38 Mina Yang notes the existence of stereotypes that Asian and Asian American musicians are technically proficient but lack musicality. See Mina Yang, “East Meets West in the Concert Hall: Asians and Classical Music in the Century of Imperialism, Post-Colonialism, and Multiculturalism,” Asian Music 38, no. 1 (2007): 14, https://doi.org/10.1353/amu.2007.0025. For East Asians’ representation in contemporary classical and popular music, see also Grace Wang, Soundtracks of Asian America: Navigating Race through Musical Performance (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1215/9780822376088.  In the case of jazz, E. Taylor Atkins cites critics who have lambasted the Japanese for their lack of creativity. Of a Japanese keyboard player, for example, British critics, Richard Cook and Brian Morton, write: “Like a lot of Japanese, he has a secure technique and a slightly chill delivery.” He also cites a description of Japanese jazz musicians in Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia which is equally disparaging: "Yet while many of Japan’s jazz artists display marvellous technical ability, few display any real originality." See Atkins, “The Japanese Jazz Artist,” 27-28. 39 See Japan Mail Office, JWM, July 5, 1890, 20-21 for an article entitled “Art and the Manufactures of Japan” which praises the various art forms in Japan; and Ibid., June 27, 1891, 752-753 for a piece entitled “Hints Upon the Formation of Collections of Japanese Art,” suggesting that Westerners considered Japanese art good enough to collect. Ibid., March 4, 1893, 253-256, shows articles which took a largely positive view of Japanese pictures and porcelains that were scheduled for exhibition at the World’s Columbian Exposition to be held in Chicago that year.  60  compared Western and Japanese art, coming down in favour of the former, but conceding that “…so far as technical skill is concerned, the Japanese are incomparable.”40 A JWM piece in 1889 criticised Japanese art for having  “nothing worthy of comparison with the choice productions of Western lands….”41 Barely disguised condescension was also directed at a supposed lack of sophistication of Japanese audiences and musicians. The JWM review of the 1896 Gakuyūkai concert in Ueno Park cited above questioned the Japanese audience’s level of musical discernment. It stated that, whereas an audience of Westerners would have expected a higher level of performance, for a Japanese audience “…it must have afforded a genuine treat.”42 The patronising attitudes towards Japanese audiences persisted and, fourteen years later, resurfaced in a review of a concert given by the Tokyo Philharmonic Society at the Yurakuza in Tokyo on June 5, 1910: “…It might have been supposed that Brahms’s Trio would have slightly over-taxed the appreciative powers of a Japanese audience….”43  Subtle denunciation of the musicians themselves also appeared in the press. On two occasions, a review and a letter in the JWM made the point that Japanese musicians were not yet proficient enough to play from the original scores. The mainly laudatory review of a charity concert at the Rokumeikan in May 1893 drew attention to the fact that the musicians were playing a simplified version of Wagner’s Tannhäuser: An orchestra of foreign instruments, played by Japanese…was heard in a modified version of the well known [sic] march from Tannhauser [sic], which has been made familiar to residents of Tokyo in a more complete form, by the best of the military bands. The material for a well-balanced orchestra is not yet ready here, and the attempt to create one is merely experimental….44  40 Ibid., May 30, 1896, 605-606.  41 Ibid., February 5, 1898, 135-136. 42 Ibid., July 11, 1896, 37.  43 Ibid., June 11, 1910, 873.  44 Ibid., May 20, 1893, 591. The superiority of the military bands over orchestral ensembles reported here is mentioned by Nomura. He claims that the level of performance by musicians of the Japanese Music Society, an orchestra which put on concerts at the Rokumeikan to impress Westerners and interest Japanese elites in Western music, could not match that of the military bands and the band of the Engineering College of Tokyo. See Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 487-488. 61  Eight years later, Japanese musicians were purportedly still playing with simplified scores. In May 1901, a letter in the correspondence section of the JWM entitled “False Prophets of Art” weighed in on a spat waged in the pages of the newspaper that involved rival foreign instructors at the TMS, Raphael von Koeber, Karl Junker, and Edward Morse. This letter criticised Junker’s lack of success at the school, and more specifically the fact that he had been remiss for not providing simplified scores for the Japanese musicians. More importantly, it alluded to the fact that the Japanese musicians themselves suspected shortcomings in their levels of proficiency: “The Japanese musicians are not exactly fools….They know they are not yet prepared to execute exacting orchestral music as it is originally scored….”45 The following section provides a Japanese perspective which confirms this attitude of self-doubt among performers and shows that some individuals involved in the world of Western music questioned their very place in it, and saw Japanese practitioners as inauthentic. Margaret Mehl contends that although the Japanese eventually made Western music their own, they continued to keep it “…on a pedestal…holding on to the belief that it is only at home in its European heartlands.”46 Illustrating Mehl’s claim, accounts written later in life by Japanese students who were enrolled at the TMS at the turn of the 20th century complement the critical concert reviews in the Western press above, and reveal that they felt themselves to be peripheral to the music scene.  Two of the accounts are written by individuals who visited Yokohama to attend concerts. In his memoirs, composer, Komatsu Kōsuke recounted an experience in 1905 when, as a TMS student, he attended a concert in Yokohama. This was “Professor Heydrich’s Concert” discussed above in which a JWM review questioned the physical stamina of the violinist, Kōda Kō. Komatsu remarked on the grandeur of the Public Hall which he compared favourably to venues in Tokyo. He described it as: “…the place where foreigners’ music concerts were mainly held. We sometimes went there to listen…” He then went on to praise the performances: “… We thought that this concert was the real thing and were very  45 Japan Mail Office, JWM , May 11, 1901, 507-509.  46 Margaret Mehl, Not by Love Alone, 6. 62  moved.”47 Fellow TMS student and one of Japan’s first composers in the Western idiom, Taki Rentarō 滝廉太郎 (1879-1903) also recorded attending a concert at the Public Hall, this time on January 30, 1899. Taki echoed Komatsu’s remark that the place was for “foreigners’ musical concerts,” describing the event as: “Yokohama gaijin no ongakukai (a music concert of/for foreigners in Yokohama).”48 Despite being enthusiastic students of Western music, both Komatsu and Taki were implicitly dissociating themselves from the very object of their studies. Komatsu called the concert in Yokohama “the real thing,” implying that its performance by - with the exception of Kōda - Western musicians conferred a sense of authenticity.  This psychological distancing may have been compounded by the physical remoteness and inaccessibility of Yokohama. Both composers noted that the concert they attended started at 9pm. Komatsu wrote: “In the Western manner, the concert started from 9 o’clock in the evening and finished at 11. So, we were worried that if we were not careful we would miss the last train.”49 His fears about not being able to return to Tokyo were justified. Reports by other TMS students who attended concerts in Yokohama mention that, with no late train home, they were forced to sleep overnight in a park there.50 For these young enthusiasts, the world of Western music was figuratively and literally out of easy reach.  Nagai Kōji was another TMS graduate who revealed similar feelings of separation from the “real thing.” In his memoirs, he recorded his experiences as a student at the TMS, including the first time he attended an opera. He mentioned that as amateurs, the Japanese singers gave a good performance. However, he fantasised about how wonderful a performance by “musicians from the country of its origin, Italy (Itaria honkoku no ongakuka)” might have been. By using the word honkoku (country of origin) Nagai was implying that, to hear a truly authentic performance of an opera, one would have to attend  47 Kōsuke Komatsu, Ongaku no Hana Hiraku Koro: Waga Omoide [When the Flower of Music Blossomed: My Memories] (Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha, 1952), 30. 48 Cited in Hiroshi Endō, Meiji Ongaku Shikō [Thoughts about Meiji Music] (Tōkyō: Ōzorasha, 1991), 275. 49 Komatsu, Ongaku no Hana, 30. 50 Masahiko Masumoto Yokohama Gēte Za: Meiji Taishō no Seiyō Gekijō [The Yokohama Gaiety Theatre: Meiji and Taishō Western Theatre] (Yokohama: Iwasaki Hakubutsukan Gēte Zakinen Shuppankyoku, 1986), 170.  63  a concert by an Italian opera troupe. The corollary of this is that Nagai believed the Japanese performers he had heard were not quite the “real thing.”  Nagai’s belief was no doubt reinforced on two separate occasions. When he was attempting, at the TMS, to imitate the voice of a famous Italian opera singer, his teacher, Miss Bloxham, suddenly entered the classroom and shut him down saying: “Stop imitating. That is an opera singer’s style. In Europe, your unrefined voice would be treated as a thing of contempt.”51 Nagai also recorded another incident after Kōda Nobu, who had recently returned from her studies in Germany, had become his teacher. He asked Kōda whether a graduate from the TMS could be accepted into a school in Germany to which she replied: “Why ? Why? It’s very hard to get in. You would have to go there and prepare for a number of years. You would not be able to do it without studying.”52 While both sets of comments were hardly encouraging, the dismissive remarks of Bloxham, exemplifying the prejudicial attitude held by some Westerners that the Japanese were simply not capable of mastering Western music, contrast with Kōda’s slightly more measured and constructive reply.  The reviews and articles above indicate a gap in perception between what Komatsu, Taki and Nagai considered the “real thing” - represented in the thriving Western musical scene in places like the Public Hall, Yokohama - and the endeavours and aspirations of Japanese amateurs and TMS students to become involved in this. Tōru Takenaka has drawn attention to some of the shortcomings and barriers faced by Japanese students of Western music, and their attempts to overcome them. He uses the example of Shimasaki Akatarō who, despite being recognised as a leading organist in Tokyo, struggled to complete at the intermediary level when he went to study in Leipzig. He also points out that Nagai Kōji did not have access to a keyboard instrument in his Tokyo boarding house and so extemporised by using the picture of a keyboard drawn on a strip of cardboard.53 However, Takenaka does not describe their personal responses to these deficiencies. Komatsu, Taki, and Nagai did not explicitly express a sense of marginalisation. Their reactions described above do,  51 Kōji Nagai, Koshikata Hachijūnen [The Past 80 Years] (Ōsaka: Ōsaka Ongaku Tankidaigaku Gakuyūkai Shuppanbu, 1954), 76. 52 Ibid., 72. 53 Tōru Takenaka, “Isawa Shūji's “National Music”: National Sentiment and Cultural Westernisation in Meiji Japan,” Itinerario 34, no. 3 (2010): 117, footnote 23,  https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S0165115310000719. Takenaka cites Nagai, Koshikata, 53, and Instructors’ Certificates for Akatarō Shimasaki, in Archiv der Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig, respectively. 64  however, lend weight to the claim that they were conscious of a disparity in the levels of proficiency. Their accounts, when considered together with the press reviews which reveal a variety of prejudices against Japanese practitioners of Western music, suggest that, while striving for success in their chosen vocation, they saw themselves as second-rate and inauthentic.54   Although the TMS was pivotal to the spread of Western music in Japan, cultural misunderstanding as to its role existed, and articles in both the Japanese and Western press questioned its efficacy and sometimes its very raison-d'être. This draws attention to the fact that formal processes of adoption, to which the TMS was central, were not sufficient to fully account for the spread of Western music and that other dynamics need to be taken into consideration. An 1893 piece in the editorial notes of the JWM entitled “The College of Music” showed that the TMS had detractors in the foreign community. The article attacked the foreign teachers and challenged the very suitability of teaching Western music in Japan: The music taught at the College, says our contemporary, is not Japanese music, but Western. The words of the songs sung by the students may be in Japanese, but the tunes are entirely foreign. Hence foreign teachers, who can barely pronounce a few words of Japanese, have to be employed at high salaries, a state of affairs inconsistent with the aims for which the College was established.55  54 Again, parallels can be seen in the contemporary worlds of Western classical music and early 20th-century jazz. Similar issues face Japanese performers of Western classical music in the 21st-century. In a recent study in which she interviewed Japanese musicians between 2012 and 2019 to probe the connection between race, identity and perceptions of authenticity, Beata M. Kowalczyk found that her interviewees shared feelings of marginalisation and inauthenticity. This included concerns about being physically “ill-suited for interpreting and performing Western music,” and technically polished rather than possessing genuine creativity. See Beata M. Kowalczyk, “‘…in Japan, We Are Just Imitating the “real” Thing…’. (Re)doing Racialized Authentic Self in Classical Music.” Gender, work, and organization 30, no. 4 (2023): 1468-1483, https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13024.  In the case of jazz, musicians and fans in the early 20th century faced similar concerns about the issue of authenticity. At its roots was a problem of ethnicity: jazz was a genre that was unabashedly American and more specifically rooted in African American culture. E. Taylor Atkins cites a 1989 article in the magazine Japan Update which posits that jazz: ”…to too many in Hayasaka [Sachi]’s potential young audience, just doesn’t seem ‘‘authentic’’ unless it is played by Americans.” Atkins points out that, despite their “complex,” Japanese enthusiasts continued to play and listen to jazz. One strategy they deployed to ameliorate this nagging sense of inauthenticity was to attempt to indigenise jazz and create a Japanese style. Atkins postulates that this might have even incentivised musicians more and pushed them “to pour their whole selves into the creative process.” See Atkins, “The Japanese Jazz Artist,” 41-42. 55 Japan Mail Office, JWM, September 30, 1893, 371.  65  Among Japanese commentators, opinion of the institution was often clouded by cultural confusion. One source of this was the ambiguous position of performing arts in Japanese society. An article in the JWM entitled “The Academy of Music in Tokyo” (another name for the TMS), for example, summarised and commented on a piece in the Japanese daily newspaper, the Hinichi Shinbun, according to which the Ministry of Education had vetoed the performance of an opera by the students at the school. The Ministry had not justified its decision, but the article speculated that it was because Japanese parents had objected to their children taking part in what they considered a theatrical performance. The article made the point that theatrical arts were still looked down on in Japan.56 Another JWM summary in the same year highlighted a similar cultural misunderstanding. It referred to a series of ten articles concerning the TMS that had appeared in another daily Japanese newspaper, the Yamato Shinbun. The original pieces had accused the school of “serious abuses” because it was a mixed-sex establishment. Some Japanese had objected on the grounds that such a system was not viable in Japan due to “traditional and practically ineradicable notions on this subject.” Mixed-sex classes were still an anathema and, by breaking this cultural taboo, the school had created detractors among members of the Japanese public.57 On one occasion, press criticism of the TMS led to allegations of downright prejudice. In September 1911, a letter appeared in the correspondence section of the JWM. It was written by Heinrich Werkmeister (1883-1936), a German composer and cellist who taught at the TMS from 1907 until 1921. The letter was Werkmeister’s reaction to an article that appeared in the same publication on September 15 entitled “The Four Foreign Musicians” which, in turn, had reported on an article in the Japanese newspaper, the Kokumin Shinbun, of the thirteenth. Werkmeister wrote: “…it is not the first time that foreign instructors, particularly those of the Academy of Music, have been slandered in an abominable way by newspapers of a lower order.…” He added that this may be due to: “…motives of jealousy on the part of Japanese musicians or, worse still racial prejudice…on the part of men “higher up”.” Werkmeister also commented on an article in the Yomiuri Shimbun of July 27 in which Professor August Junker had been unfairly criticised by the  56 Ibid., May 16, 1908, 544.  57 Ibid., August 15, 1908, 193.  66  Director of the school. Werkmeister directed his ire at the Japanese government for not doing anything to shield the foreign instructors from this kind of prejudice.58 While not denunciations of Western music per se, the misunderstandings and alleged unfair treatment of TMS staff brought up in these articles indicate a certain antipathy toward the institution and highlight the difficulties it faced in its attempts to promote Western music. This was no doubt partly self-inflicted and a result of the cultural insensitivity of coddled “foreign teachers, who can barely pronounce a few words of Japanese.” However, it was also symptomatic of a tendency on the part of conservative elements of Japanese society to display resistance, sometimes manifesting as discrimination and prejudice, to perceived cultural incursions. This ambivalent attitude - attempting to embrace the foreign while keeping it at a distance - is symptomatic of the internal contradictions of Meiji modernity.59   The Importance of Informal Spread The voices questioning the place of Western music in Japanese society continued throughout the Meiji Period. However, by the end of the era, people were becoming more familiar with  the participation of Japanese musicians in performances of Western music. An article announcing an “Autumn Concert,” an orchestral and choral performance by the Tokyo Academy of Music (TMS) on November 27, 1910 summarised the genuine progress that the Japanese had made.  The work now done at the Tokyo Academy of Music indicates the rapid progress Japan is making in the development of an art esteemed by foreigners to have been almost quite neglected in old Japan. Some of the vocal solos heard of late in Tokyo prove that among both men and women in Japan there is considerable talent and capacity for voice culture and good singing, while the instrumental talent now to be  58 Ibid., September 23, 1911, 355.  59 This tension is best exemplified by the slogan wakon yōsai 和魂洋才(Japanese spirit, Western technique), invoked by the Meiji government and intended as a guideline by which Japan should selectively adopt elements from the West. Writing about the reception and spread of coffee culture in the Meiji era, Merry White contends that this concept was used to sanction successful practical and technical Western elements of Western culture as a protection against the incursion of more fundamental ones related to values. See Merry I. White, Coffee Life in Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 31, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1525/9780520952485. 67  seen and heard compares quite favourably with that displayed in countries where the art of music has been much longer under cultivation.60 This chapter has emphasised the aesthetic and cultural barriers to the adoption and spread of Western music to place the process in historical context. It is, however, important to also acknowledge the encouragement given to Japanese musicians and singers, even if it was sometimes couched condescendingly in terms of praise for their plucky attempts to master the Western art form. For example, positive reviews of performances featuring the Kōda sisters have already been noted. One amateur ensemble that was generally lauded by critics for its efforts to promote Western music was the Meiji Ongaku Kai,61 a performance by which is mentioned above. This was an amateur ensemble that was founded in 1898 by former court musicians and graduates of the TMS. As an independent organisation consisting of “…Japanese gentlemen who are devoting their leisure time to the study and practice of European instrumental music…,“62 it represented an aspect of the voluntary and informal spread of Western music. To illustrate the positive reputation of the Society in the press, a JWM article entitled “The Ongaku Kwai” published in December 1899 described the situation as follows:  Gaining confidence as they advanced, they have occasionally essayed more ambitious flights…it may be in their power to secure a high and enviable reputation as pioneers in an art which, though at present lightly valued in Japan, must eventually be honoured and revered, as it is in all countries where the true spirit of civilization prevails.63  Concerned about maintaining the prestige enjoyed by the ensemble, its conductor, E.H. House, wrote a letter to the JWM expressing regret about performance errors at a concert in Tokyo in June 1900. This self-criticism demonstrates House’s frustration that the orchestra was not living up to the high esteem in which he and others now held it, nor shouldering the responsibility he believed it should: “…for the Meiji Ongaku-kwai is the only  60 Japan Mail Office, JWM, November 26, 1910, 679.  61 Sometimes transliterated as Meiji Ongakukwai, Ongakukai, or Ongaku-kai. Nomura recognises the important work of the ensemble and notes that they gave more than 50 concerts between their founding and 1910. See Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 10.  62 Japan Mail Office, JWM, March 18, 1899, 269. 63 Ibid., December 9, 1899, 591.  68  body in Japan that can keep alive even a spark of public interest in foreign music, and, if its standing is impaired, this service cannot be effectively performed.”64 House understood that the future success of Western music in Japan depended on informal processes of spread, and saw the Society as an integral part of that. By the same token, he was critical of a lack of sustained effort on the part of the Japanese government to build on its initial drive to promote Western music in the country after it had mandated the singing of shōka in primary schools in the 1870s. In his letter, House went on to express frustration at what he saw as the abandonment of this government-led project, “…which in former years showed praiseworthy activity, but the officers of which now take scarcely any pains to diffuse musical intelligence or to stimulate musical progress among their countrymen.” According to House, the attempt to spread Western music had instead been left to “…the independent exertions of a self-sustaining association….” 65 House was correct about the important role played by independent organisations like the Meiji Ongaku Kai. The success of Japanese performers in the concert hall no doubt helped kindle interest in Western music among sections of the Japanese public. However, this alone was not enough and it would require more than wider Japanese participation in concerts to promote the art form in the country at large. In a 1901 article for the Tokyo Maishū Shinshi, Buddhist scholar, Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 (1866-1945) offered an explanation for the failure of Western music to catch on in Japan. He wrote that no route had been established for its spread because its benefits were uncertain. He was also critical of the lackadaisical efforts of both the TMS, which he accused of being “…hidden away in Ueno…” and even attacked the Meiji Ongaku Kai which, he wrote: “…rarely puts on any concerts….”66 In 1899, an article based on an address to the “Owa kai, a Philharmonic Society” given by academic, Toyama Masakazu 外山正一 (1848-1900), appeared in the periodical, Tanou. Toyama remarked that the purpose of the Philharmonic Society was “… not to give concerts but to devise measures for the better development of musical talent and musical taste in the nation…. Public opinion has to be educated in order to appreciate  64 Ibid., June 30, 1900, 648.  65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., February 23, 1901, 202. 69  really good music….”67 The education he alluded to was not simply formal classroom-based learning. It can be interpreted in the broader sense of an effort to raise the Japanese public’s awareness and appreciation of Western music through increased and more regular exposure.  This chapter has shown evidence of a divide from the beginning of the Meiji period between Japanese and Westerners, not only in tastes, but also in understandings of the place of music in society. Accounts by individuals, and articles and reviews in the Japanese and English-language press revealed a lack of interest in Western music among the Japanese, matched by a general scepticism from Western residents regarding the Japanese suitability for involvement in the art form. Accusations in the press were levelled at Japanese musicians’ physical deficiencies, and inadequate skill and feeling for Western music. Some of these claims were, in turn, shared by young aspiring Japanese musicians themselves who worried about their lack of ability and authenticity. The adoption of Western music exposed fault lines in the broader process of coming to terms with Western social and cultural influences. Doubts about the suitability of Western music in Japan were entangled in debates that were occurring in other areas of Meiji life including art, sports and physical fitness, and the issue of mixed sex classes in education.  Despite these strong headwinds, however, the chapter has concluded that the efforts of individuals such as the young TMS students and ensembles such as the Meiji Ongaku Kai cut through the indifference and prejudice and contributed to a general acceptance of Japanese participation in Western musicmaking over time. These were external manifestations of a gradual process of familiarisation with Western music which was occurring offstage and was facilitating the development of musical talents and tastes among the Japanese population. The following chapters demonstrate how this process unfolded.    67 Ibid., July 8, 1899, 38.  70     71  Chapter 2 - Western Music in a Christian Context  An anecdote related by ex-samurai and Christian convert, Ibuka Kajinosuke, illustrates that the gulf in musical sensibilities discussed in the previous chapter extended to Western religious music. The incident, a hymn rehearsal involving himself and a group of his peers who were undergoing instruction in preparation for baptism, took place in Yokohama at the Protestant missionary school, Kyōritsu Jogakkō (Kyōritsu Girls School).1 There, in the early 1870s, the American missionary and long-term resident, the Reverend James H. Ballagh (1832-1920) presided over regular prayer meetings that were attended by aspiring converts as well as the school’s staff and students.  According to Ibuka, the rehearsal was led by teacher and founder of the school, Mrs. Pierson, and several of the female students. Ibuka contrasted the vocal proficiency of the women with the “awful” singing of the men, singling out some of the latter, including himself, for condemnation: “Maki Shigeto had a naturally loud voice, but he was somewhat out of tune. However, Oshikawa, Ibuka, Uemura, Kumano and others did not yet seem to be very proficient, and there was no guarantee that we would become great [singers] afterwards.” Both the hymn music and lyrics which had, in his view, been badly translated by Westerners, presented difficulties for the samurai students. Ibuka painted an almost comical scene:  Okano Masatsuna Sensei often went wrong and mangled his hymns in the style of a nō song, or a gidayū or a shinaibushi, which was entertaining.2 However, at that time, Okano Sensei took it seriously and sang gustily without batting an eyelid. We did not explode [with mirth], however, here and there, faint laughter was given vent to. Ibuka’s story touches on some of the broader themes that will be developed further in this study. As well as confirming how “strange and unattractive” Western music sounded to Japanese ears in the early Meiji period, it reveals a tendency for the Japanese to meet  1 Now the girl’s high-school, Yokohama Kyōritsu Jogakuen.  2 Gidayū is a narrative style of singing and Shinaibushi is a type of jōruri chanted recitative. Both were accompanied by the shamisen and appeared in bunraku (puppet theatre). 72  that alien art form in the spirit of creativity and experimentation. The attempt made by the samurai to overcome their awkwardness by reinterpreting the hymns as familiar Japanese genres points to a form of “creative adaptation.” A recurring theme in this study is that the Japanese adopted a flexible and playful attitude in their engagement with Western music in different contexts. Another theme illustrated by the incident is the formation of new communities in the Meiji period. Some of these associations, like the group of samurai, had tangential connections with Western music; others, such as brass and woodwind musicians in commercial bands were more directly linked with it. Finally, it suggests that, despite its unfamiliarity and strangeness, the Japanese participated in Western music in an emotionally engaged manner, rather than for strictly utilitarian goals. According to Ibuka, “pious feelings overflowed” at these sessions and music heightened the occasion as “Mrs. Pierson attended, played the piano and sang hymns, [which] ….stirred the emotions of the attendees.”3  Set at the missionary school, Kyōritsu Jogakkō and featuring a cast of ex-samurai converts, the anecdote introduces the subject of this chapter. It portrays a specific instance of engagement with Western music in a Christian context. This was an important vector of the adoption of Western music in Japan from the beginning of the Meiji Period. Outside the military parade grounds and elite diplomatic circles, missionary schools and affiliated churches were the first places ordinary Japanese could hear and play Western music.4 Before communal singing of shōka was introduced as part of compulsory primary education in the late 1870s, Christian converts and young missionary school students had the opportunity to learn and perform hymns and canonical Western works with a religious theme. Showing how Western music was adopted in a Christian setting is also an  3 Ibuka Kajinosuke to Sono Jidai, Dai 1 Kan [Ibuka Kajinosuke and his Era, Volume 1], ed. Ibuka Kajinosuke to Sono Jidai Kankō Iinkai (Tōkyō: Meijigakuin, 1969), 301-305. The extract is taken from Kyōritsu Jogakkō Sōritsu Rokujūnenki ni saishi no zengo Jisei wo omou Tsuisōki [Reminiscences of Events that Occurred Around the Time of the School’s Founding in the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of Kyōritsu Jogakkō] written in July 1931 by Yamamoto Hideteru 山本秀輝,  pastor and historian of the Christian Church in Japan. Yamamoto took excerpts from the sections related to Ibuka, and people with whom he was deeply connected such as Kumano Yushichi 熊野雄七 and Ibuka’s future wife, Mizukami Sekiko 水上せき子. 4 This point was made by George Allchin (1845-1902), a prominent missionary who came to Japan in 1882 who was named in his New York Times obituary “the father of Church music in Japan.” Allchin believed that the nationwide drive for music education in Japan would be through the churches because, other than in military settings, they were the only places where music was used by Japanese on a daily basis. See Teshirogi, Sanbika, 160-161. For the New York Times obituary citation, see Ibid., 138.  73  appropriate point of departure in this study which illustrates, over the following chapters, the vital role played by a handful of Japanese individuals with associations to a Presbyterian mission in Tokyo in setting up the first Western musical instrument store there. This chapter covers different aspects of the adoption of music in a Christian context. By doing so, it draws attention to the diversity of the individuals who came into contact with Western music, which is another central finding of this study. It presents three cases to illustrate that encounters with hymns and other religious music affected the lives of a range of Japanese people: a young female student who, as a teacher of Western music later in life, found a place in Meiji society; disillusioned ex-samurai converts for whom music was a key part of their Christian faith; and young talented individuals whose early encounters with hymns partly inspired their future career choices. The chapter illustrates how contact with Christian music provided access to new kinds of opportunity for a diverse group of people.  The first case involves Kinowaki Sonoko (dates unknown), a gifted female student at Kyōritsu Jogakkō. After graduation, Kinowaki returned to her alma mater as a teacher of music and English. Her story illustrates how music pedagogy at missionary schools was part of their broader educational function and extended to the schooling of women.5 The second case study features two prominent Christian converts, Tamura Naoomi and Uemura Masahisa. They belonged to a class of ex-samurai who turned to Christianity after losing social status in the wake of the Restoration of 1868. The case study shows that they valued Western music as a central part of their faith.6 The final case illustrates that, even outside the context of the church and missionary school, religious music in the form of hymns,  5 Scholars of the history of Christianity in Japan recognise the priority given by Protestant missionaries to Christian education. For an overview, see John Hastings, “Japan’s Protestant Schools and Churches in Light of the Mission Theory and History,” in Handbook of Christianity in Japan, ed. Mark R. Mullins (Boston: BRILL, 2003), 101-123, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=253624. Hamish Ion and Karen Seat write about missionary school education, particularly for women. See Hamish Ion, American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan, 1859-73 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=3412736, 224; and Karen Seat, “Mission Schools and Education for Women,” in Mullins, Handbook, 331. Sondra Wieland Howe discusses the influence of missionaries in introducing music through hymns and the importance of missionary schools in teaching music to young women. See Howe, “The Role of Women,” 84-96; and Howe, Luther Whiting Mason, 70-71. 6 See James M. Hommes, “‘Baptized Bushidō’: Christian Converts and the Use of Bushidō in Meiji Japan,” Journal of the Southwest Conference on Asian Studies 7, (2011): 117-144, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/baptized-bushido-christian-converts-use-meiji/docview/1366393882/se-2; and Irwin Scheiner, Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan, Michigan Classics in Japanese Studies ([N.p.]: U of M Center For Japanese Studies, 2020), https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2584680&site=ehost-live. 74  continued to be played and heard in Christian households, inspiring young music enthusiasts to become composers and educators in the world of music in the 20th century.7  A common thread running through the case studies is that the Japanese viewed religious music as part of a modernising package that formed around Christianity and included other aspects of Western knowledge and culture.8 According to Hamish Ion, a missionary school education offered the Japanese access to many Western concepts and presented them with a “smorgasbord” of different ideas.9 In 1909, prominent critic of Christianity, Inoue Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 (1855-1944) laid out in the periodical, Rikugō Zasshi, what he conceded to be the attractions of Christianity. One of these was that it “…benefits immensely from the fact that it has Western civilisation at its back…it has come to be associated with progress and prosperity.”10 In the same year, Rev. R. Minami reminisced in the Methodist publication, Michi, about the early decades of the Meiji period when the missionaries inspired admiration in their Japanese students, and “Christians took a prominent part in all sorts of new enterprises. They were the pioneers in teaching English, music and philosophy while preaching the Gospel.”11 The different types of contact with Christianity revealed in these case studies show how the religion facilitated engagement with the music component of this package and that, in each case, the nature of the connection between music and Christianity varied.  7 For a comprehensive account of the introduction of hymns by US missionaries, and how this was related to the introduction of shōka into primary schools, see Teshirogi, Sanbika, and Shun’ichi Teshirogi, Meiji to Sanbika. A number of scholars take the view that the musical simplicity of hymns made them a form of Western music palatable to the Japanese. See Chiba, Doremi, 43-48 and 71-72; and Kōichi Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 457-458. 8 Teshirogi contends that Christianity, which had been the bedrock of Western science since the 16th century, continued to underpin its accompanying technological and industrial advances into the 19th. He writes that, from the perspective of the US missionaries like Eben Tourjée (1834-1891), who was involved in dispatching missionaries such as Luther Whiting Mason to Japan, for the country to modernise along Christian lines, it needed to also incorporate Western music. Tourjée believed that the flourishing of modern science, the church, and music was an expression of God's providence. Teaching Western music and its “natural and perfect scale” was therefore not merely a useful tool for proselytization, but was fundamental to Japan’s modernisation. See Teshirogi, Sanbika, 197-198. 9 Ion, American Missionaries, ix-xiii. This study engages with the research of Takenaka Tōru who focuses on how Christianity and Western culture, including music, were attractive to the han (pro-Tokugawa) samurai. See Tōru Takenaka, “Foreign Sound as Compensation,” 188-193. 10 Cited in Japan Mail Office, JWM, May 29, 1909, 715-716.  11 Ibid., January 30, 1909, 140.  75  Case Study One: Music in Mission Schools The subject of this case study is Kinowaki Sonoko. She was a student at Kyōritsu Jogakkō from 1872, and returned there later as a teacher of music and English.12 It is the story of a young Japanese woman who, through the modernising package provided by a missionary school education of which music was a key component, was able to assume a new kind of role in Meiji society. This research pieces together a story hitherto missed by historians. Although she left no written records, it is possible to paint a picture of Kinowaki through references to her made by others. Doing so illustrates the link between Christian missions and women’s education, and also touches on music pedagogy at missionary schools in Japan. Before relating her story, it is important to consider the context. This includes the role played by missionary schools in the promotion of Western music in Japan and elsewhere, the emancipatory effects of missionary education for women in Japan, and the position of music in the curriculum.  As mentioned above, the activities of Protestant missionary schools were crucial in the early take-up of Western music. In this regard, Japan was not unique. Writing about the spread of the art form across the world in the context of 19th-century imperialism, Bob Van Der Linden notes that indigenous elites and peoples in different locations gained contact with Western music through hymns and military music.13 With differences in historical context and pedagogical approach, this was the case from the Middle East and Africa to East Asia.14 In Asia, Korea imported Western music chiefly via American Protestant missionary schools. For Koreans, however, the communal singing of hymns and secular folk songs was a way of expressing and stimulating patriotic feelings in resistance to the Japanese occupation of 1910 to 1945. Music thus provided the space in which artistic and religious sentiment  12 See Ion, American Missionaries, 230. Citing Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen 120 nen no Ayumi Henshu Iinkai, Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen 120 nen no ayumi [The Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen: The Course of 120 Years] (Yokohama: Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen, 1991), 68, Ion writes that Kinowaki spent only two years as a student at Kyōritsu Jogakkō from 1872 to 1874, after which she went to study in Kagoshima. However, archival evidence cited below suggests that she graduated from Kyōritsu Jogakkō on May 31, 1882. This exemplifies the confusion regarding the biographical details of her life. 13 Van Der Linden, "Non-Western National Music and Empire,” 435-436.  14 Palestine provides an interesting case study. Like Japan, it was  Western-style modernity centred on the nation-state. Music was considered an important cultural element of this and, in the context of missionary education, was deemed to be a “medium of harmony and moral elevation.” See Beckles Willson, Orientalism and Musical Mission, 1-34. 76  were entwined with nationalist and emancipatory zeal.15 Protestant missionaries in Taiwan, prior to the 1895 Japanese protectorate, were also highly reliant on the use of music, particularly for proselytising to the aboriginal peoples of the island.16 Paraphrasing Protestant leaders in Japan, Thomas John Hastings stated that the “”praying” Christianity of Korea and the “singing” Christianity of Taiwan” contrasted with Japan’s “”thinking” or “studying” style of Christianity.”17 Compared with Korea and Taiwan, the focus of missionaries in Japan was very much on education, of which music was an important element.  Predating the Meiji government’s own initiative to improve the position of women in society, missionary schools in Japan placed a strong emphasis on the education of young women. Compulsory primary education for both boys and girls was introduced by the government in 1872 under the Fundamental Code of Education. The purpose of girls’ education was to foster the ideal woman and furnish her with the skills suited to the development of a modern nation in the hope of elevating the country’s status, or at least avoiding appearing backwards on the global stage. The state created a notional standard for womanhood, encapsulated in the phrase ryōsai kenbo 良妻賢母 (good wife, wise mother), and geared the education system toward that ideal. The approach to women’s education adopted by foreign missionary schools, however, was slightly different. The objectives of female education there were not only to train young women to spread the faith by raising and teaching the next generation of Christians, but also  “…to improve the general situation and wellbeing of women and, through them, their families’, by teaching them to create Christian homes.”18 Christian missionaries gave women the educational opportunities and access to networks that empowered them to negotiate change and assume a place in Meiji  15 Hyun Kyong Hannah Chang, “A Fugitive Christian Public: Singing, Sentiment, and Socialization in Colonial Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies 25, no. 2 (2020): 291-323, https://doi.org/10.1215/07311613-8551992. 16 Angela Hao-Chun Lee. “The Influence of Governmental Control and Early Christian Missionaries on Music Education of Aborigines in Taiwan,” British Journal of Music Education 23, no. 2 (2006): 205-216, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265051706006930. 17 Hastings, “Japan’s Protestant Schools and Churches,” 103. 18 See Simona Lukminaite, “Developments in Female Education of Meiji Japan as Seen from Jogaku Zasshi S Editorials by Iwamoto Yoshiharu,” Analele Universitatii Crestine Dimitrie Cantemir, Seria Stiintele Limbii, Literaturii si Didactica Predarii, no. 1 (2015): 12. Also, Teshirogi contends that the Japanese paragon of womanhood as “good wife, wise mother” was at odds with the American Christian ideal propagated by female missionaries. In the same way, home as the domain of Christian morals became katei, Christianity was replaced by nationhood, and “mother of the Republic” became “mother of the military nation.” See Teshirogi, Sanbika, 113 and 120. 77  society. For example, Yasui Tetsu 安井てつ (1870-1945) went to England in 1896 to study at Oxford and Cambridge, and became a women’s educator on returning to Japan.19  Music was an integral part of Japanese missionary school curricula for girls. With a strong emphasis on promoting self-education and inculcating the motivation to help others, female students at these establishments were encouraged to learn skills such as drawing, music, and sewing so as to enrich themselves and be of benefit to society.20 Protestant missionary schools in Yokohama and other port cities played an important role in women’s education in English and music, the study of which were combined through the singing of hymns.21 While not directly related to missionary schools, some women were able to find a niche and prosper in Meiji Japan by gaining what were rare and valuable skills in Western scientific and cultural fields. In the area of music, for example, Uryū Shigeko 瓜生繁子(nee Nagai Shigeko, 1862-1928) participated in the 1871 Iwakura Mission to the United States at the age of 10, graduated in music from the School of Art, Vassar College, and became a successful piano teacher in Japan from 1886.22  Kyōritsu Jogakkō was one of the first Protestant missionary schools for girls. Its foundation dates back to 1871. On June 25 that year, Mary Pruyn, Louise Pierson and Julia Crosby arrived in Yokohama. They were members of the ‘Women’s Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands’, which had been established in New York a decade earlier.23 In August, they established the American Mission Home in the foreign quarters of the port city at Yamate Number 48, the home of Reverend Ballagh.24 In October 1872, the  19 Garrett L. Washington, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Christianity and the Modern Woman in East Asia, ed. Garrett L. Washington (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2018), 6, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1163/9789004369108_002. For a biography of Yasui Tetsu, see Hiroko Tomida, “56. Yasui Tetsu (1870-1945): Promoter of Women's Higher Education,” in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Vol X, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 625-636, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781898823469-060. 20 Mara Patessio, Women and Public Life in Early Meiji Japan: The Development of the Feminist Movement (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 2011), 81, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=30379246. 21 Sondra Wieland Howe highlights the key role of female missionaries such as Mrs Hepburn and Mary Kidder who were associated with Yokohama’s first mission school for girls, Ferisu Jogakkō (The Ferris Seminary). See Howe, “The Role of Women,” 84-86. 22 Margaret Mehl, “A Man's Job?” 110. 23 They were Mary P. Pruyn (1820-1885), Julia N. Cosby (1834-1918), and Louise H Pierson (1832-1899) 24 Before their departure for Japan, Ballagh had apprised them of the dire situation for children of mixed blood whose care was the remit of their mission. 78  school transferred to its permanent location at Yamate Number 202, which was, according to the ambitious Pruyn, “…the most attractive spot in Yokohama, a wide three-acre corner plot with plenty of room to expand in the future.” The establishment, which became all-female in its student body and staff, was then renamed ‘The English Speaking School for Japanese Young Ladies’ and within three months had 52 boarders (including staff), and 20 day pupils. In April 1875, the school changed its name again to Kyōritsu Jogakkō.25 Kyōritsu Jogakkō and its sister school, Ferisu Jogakkō, became well-respected missionary schools for girls in Yokohama. Music was a key element in the curricula at both institutions and students gave performances at venues in the port city for a variety of school ceremonies, and these invariably garnered positive reviews in the English-language print media. An article in the JWM entitled “Kyoritsu Jo Gakko” praised that school’s commencement exercises in 1891, adding: “The musical members were all the more noteworthy because this department is under the control of Japanese teachers only, whose thorough and skilled training was plainly evidenced in the work.”26 The statement that the musicians were led solely by Japanese teachers is key for this case study. Based on the archival sources, the following sections will suggest that, although unnamed, one of the Japanese teachers commended in the article was very likely to have been former pupil, Kinowaki Sonoko. An investigation of her early life not only uncovers the story of a woman who, through music, was able to find a place in Meiji society, but also provides insights into music pedagogy in missionary schools.  Reference to Kinowaki first appeared in 1877 when Mary Pruyn published an account of her experiences in Japan in an easy-to-read children’s book entitled Grandmamma’s Letters From Japan. In a moralistic yet maternal tone, Pruyn wrote short anecdotes to inform her readership about various aspects of Japan’s culture and customs.27 In Chapter twenty three, she described the plight and redemption of a female pupil, O’Sono—her pet-name for Kinowaki Sonoko. Pruyn related how the girl’s father, a nobleman, had lost his wealth and subsequently died of sickness on military service during  25 For a brief summary of the founding of the school, see Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen, Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen no Hyaku Nijūnen: Senhappyaku Shichijūichi-Senkyūhyaku Kujūichi [120 Years of Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen: 1871-1991] (Yokohama: Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen, 1991), 24-35. 26 Japan Mail Office, JWM, July 4, 1891, 9. 27 Chapters and subsections of the book have titles such as: “Japanese Religious Ceremonies,” “Rice Culture,” “The Children in Japan,” “Visit to an Old Temple,” and “Great Rush to See the Foreign Lady.” 79  the 1874 Japanese invasion of Taiwan. A friend of her late-father, the army commander, “General Saigō,”28 then took it upon himself to oversee Sonoko’s studies and, “hearing her read and sing, he expressed himself quite delighted, and said he had never heard any native pronounce English so well as she did.” Saigō encouraged her to become a teacher after her studies. Pruyn concluded the section: O’Sono came to us two and a half years ago, not knowing a word of English, or even anything in her own language beyond the merest child’s talk. She is now a little more than 11 years old, and is in studies quite as far advanced as most girls in American schools at that age, and reads at our morning prayers as fluently and correctly as anyone in the room.29 Subjected to the ravages of financial insecurity and war that led to the impoverishment and death of her father, Kinowaki’s childhood had been marred by turbulence typical of the early Meiji era. However, with the support and mentorship she received from Pruyn and Saigō, and the opportunities provided through her Christian education at Kyōritsu Jogakkō, she was able to overcome this difficult start in life. As Pruyn’s testimony suggests, Kinowaki was a good student and her talents blossomed at the school. Records indicate that she graduated on May 31, 1882. Reverend Ballagh singled out for praise the composition she wrote at her examination: “…O Sono’s poem on Mount Fuji was of unusual merit, both in style and substance.”30 Although the timing is uncertain, her good standing at Kyōritsu Jogakkō allowed her to return later to teach English and music.  Unfortunately, Kinowaki left no traces in the official school archives, an absence that can be attributed to a convention by which only the names of Westerners appeared in the lists of teachers, and Japanese instructors were included anonymously under the description “native teachers,” of whom six were listed for both 1888 and 1889.31 Despite this lacuna,  28 The samurai, Saigō Tsugumichi 西郷従道 (1843-1902). He was the brother of Saigō Takemori 西鄕隆盛 (1828-1877), one of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration and head of the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, a final stand against the debasement of the samurai under the Meiji government. 29 Mary Pruyn, Grandmamma's Letters from Japan (Boston: James H. Earle, 1877), 177-180. This section is based on an address that she had given to current pupils of the school. 30 “Gakkō no Shiken” [School Examination], in Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen Shiryōshū [Yokohama Kyōritsu School Document Collection] (Yokohama: Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen, 2004), 98-99. 31 “Japan-Yokohama,” in Report of the Board for 1888, The Twenty-eight Annual Report for 1888 of The Women’s Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands, Annual Reports: 1880s: 1889, Box 29, Folder 80  however, it is possible to piece together evidence that she was involved in music instruction and performance at the school in the late 1880s. Two former pupils, Ban Tatsuko and Murakami Motoko, both of whom studied at the school between 1887 and 1890, referred to Kinowaki in a note of appreciation which appeared in the school magazine. They expressed their gratitude for the blessings of a number of the teachers including the “…musically talented Kinowaki Sonoko Sensei….”32  Further evidence of Kinowaki’s involvement in the school’s musical activities appeared in the periodical, Jogaku Zasshi (Education of Women Magazine). This recorded the Kyōritsu Jogakkō graduation ceremony in May 1887, in which she is shown to have participated as pianist. The magazine provided a programme that indicates the kind of music that pupils at the school learnt and performed. The items are listed under the following categories: “Recitation,” “Essay,” and “Music.” The latter category included the following pieces: “…Sing ye Jehovah’s Praises – Choral…Children’s Hymn…”Lo the Golden Morning Breaks” – Duet, Trio and Chorus – Adapted from Handel’s – “Joshua”…Heller’s Capricietto – Piano Solo…[and]…“Selections from Haydn’s “Creation” – Piano Duet, with Solo & Choral Singing.” Kinowaki played “Sonatina by Kuhlau – Piano Solo.”33  While probably not directly attributable to Kinowaki, the selection of music in the programme is worthy of comment as it sets the musical activities at missionary schools in Japan in a wider global context. Firstly, it reveals an eclectic mix: a hymn, standard pedagogical piano pieces by Heller and Kuhlau, and adaptations of religious works by Handel and Haydn. Despite Japan’s non-colonial status, the inclusion of standard canonical works has parallels to other parts of the world where religious choral music was introduced by missionaries in the context of imperial expansion. Robert S. Stevens notes that throughout the British colonies and protectorates, “local Indigenous communities embraced  3, The Records of the Women’s Union Missionary Society; 1860-1974, Collection 379, Archives of the Billy Graham Centre, 14. 32 Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen Rokujūnenshi [Sixty-year History of Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen] (Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen, and Yokohama Kyōritsu Gakuen Rokujūnenshi Hensan Iin, 1933), 238-239. 33 “Shinpō” [News], Jogaku Zasshi [Education of Women Magazine], no.63 (May 7, 1887), 57-58. 81  congregational hymn-singing and extended their musicmaking to choral performances of well-known works from the Western musical canon.”34 The inclusion of standard pedagogical works for piano in the graduation ceremony concert programme suggests that music education in Japan at missionary schools was also partly influenced by relatively recent innovations occurring in other parts of the world. In Britain, the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music (ABRSM) was set up in 1889 to organise and oversee a system of musical pedagogy and examination which was deployed at home and in several colonies over the subsequent decades.35 While predating the establishment of the ABRSM by two years, it is reasonable to assume that selection of pedagogical works at the Kyōritsu Jogakkō concert was influenced by new ideas around musical education that were emanating from Great Britain and about to circulate elsewhere.  Pedagogical methods employed at Kyōritsu Jogakkō also reflected those adopted in Britain and other parts of the colonial world, largely under the supervision of missionaries. School archives show that one of the approaches used there was Tonic Sol-fa (See Figure 1). This is a simplified method of teaching music without stave notation that was developed in England in the mid-19th century and, through the efforts of educators and missionaries, spread from the British Isles to other places, including Japan.36 The best-known proponent of the method in Japan was Australian, Emily Patton (1831-1912), who set up the Yokohama Juvenile Tonic Sol-fa Choral Society in 1891.37 This ensemble was successful over the course  34 Robert S. Stevens, “Tonic Sol-fa Abroad: Missionaries, Hymn-Singing, and Indigenous Communities,” in Hymns and Constructions of Race: Mobility, Agency, De/Coloniality, ed. Erin Johnson-Williams, and Philip Burnett (United Kingdom: Routledge, 2024), 28, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003356677. 35 For a description of the aims of the ABRSM and how it was taken up both in Britain itself and other parts of the Empire, see E. G. Johnson-Williams, “Re-Examining the Academy: Music Institutions and Empire in Nineteenth Century London” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2015), https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/re-examining-academy-music-institutions-empire/docview/1763814761/se-2.  36 Stevens, “Tonic Sol-fa Abroad,” 28. For an account of the evangelical zeal by which Tonic Sol-fa was propagated first in Great Britain, and later in colonial territories, particularly by nonconformist denominations, see Grant Olwage, “Singing in the Victorian World: Tonic Sol-Fa and Discourses of Religion, Science and Empire in the Cape Colony,” Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa 7, no. 2 (2010): 193-215, https://doi.org/10.1080/18125980.2010.526801. 37 For a description of Tonic Sol-fa and an overview of Patton’s activities, see Robin S. Stevens, “Emily Patton: An Australian Pioneer of Tonic Sol-Fa in Japan,” Research Studies in Music Education 14, no. 1 (2000): 40–49, https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X0001400104, and Masumoto Yokohama Gēte Za, 117-118. 82  of the 1890s and its regular concerts at venues such as the Public Hall gained glowing reviews. Patton was less well-received at the TMS, however. She was hired as a vocal trainer in October 1894, but lasted only 6 months. Her attenuated posting at the TMS was largely because Tonic Sol-Fa been rejected by the school. However, the method was adopted in missionary schools. Patton’s student, Julia Moulton (1852-1922), for example, employed Tonic Sol-fa in her choral teaching at Ferisu Jogakkō.  Figure 2.1. Handwritten Tonic Sol-fa Score and Front Cover of The Tonic Sol-Fa Music Reader Used at Kyōritsu Jogakkō. Theodore F. Seward and B. C. Unseld, The Tonic Sol-Fa Music Reader (New York and Chicago: Biglow & Main, 1890). Courtesy of the archives of Yokohama Kyōritsu Jogakuen. Photo by author and reproduced under fair-use principle.38    The overwhelmingly British influence over the works which were selected to be performed at the school continued after 1888 when Mrs Ellen Sharland (1826-1895), a British missionary listed in the Annual Report for 1888 as “Voluntary Missionary Teacher,” became the Head of the music department. Sharland’s contribution was praised at length in that year’s report: “As long as Mrs. Sharland has charge of the musical department, it is safe to say, that no school here can compare with it. I have never heard school girls render Oratorios, and that class of music, as these girls do….”39 The details of the concert graduation ceremony and the plaudits for the high standard of the department cited above  38 On the front cover, it states “Approved by John Curwen.” Curwen (1816-1880) was an English Protestant Minister responsible for the spread of the Tonic Sol-fa method. 39 “Japan-Yokohama,” in Report of the Board for 1888, 14-15. 83  gives an indication of the serious and diligent attitude of all teachers and pupils toward the performance of Western music.  Mrs. Sharland occupied the position as Head of the department for only a short time. Archival sources suggest that she left Yokohama in 1890 for a new post at the American Baptist Mission in Chōfu, Tokyo.40 She passed away on April 19, 1895. The timing of her departure from Kyōritsu Jogakkō would account for the observation in the JWM review of the 1891 commencement exercises cited earlier that the music department had only Japanese teachers. Despite the absence of her name in the records, Kinowaki Sonoko’s continued contribution to the successful operation of the music department at the school is without question. Very little is known about her life and career. However, piecing together the fragmented sources suggests that through her missionary school education and the opportunities it provided her in the practical skills of English and music, she was able to overcome a difficult upbringing and find her vocation in the turbulent years of the early Meiji Period. Case Study Two: Ex-Samurai and Music The subjects of the second case study could not be more different from the young O’Sono. However, like her, they too had seen their worlds upended in the turbulence of the early years of the Meiji period and suffered as a result of the subsequent dissolution of the social order. This case study considers the significance of Christian music for Tamura Naoomi and Uemura Masahisa, two ex-samurai Christian converts who became prominent figures in the development of the religion in Japan. They were part of a network of former samurai which also included Uchimura Kanzō 内村鑑三 (1861-1930), Ebina Danjō 海老名弾正 (1856-1937), and Nitobe Inazō 新渡戸稲造 (1862-1933).  Many of these individuals, particularly those who had been loyal to the Tokugawa Shōgunate and thus found themselves on the losing side of the Meiji Restoration, were attracted to the message promulgated by the Christian missionaries. Scholars have noted that the motivation to convert, while it varied by person, was often born out of a desire to regain lost status and purpose as well as a respect for the ascetic Puritan piety of many of  40 Letter from Ellen Sharland, January 16, 1891. This indicates the American Baptist Mission in Chōfu as her address. Letter viewed at the archives of Yokohama Kyōritsu Jogakuen. 84  the Western missionary teachers and a conviction that Christianity was compatible with, and fulfilled, the samurai’s ethical code, bushidō.41 A quotation from Ebina Danjō betrays his sense of alienation in the face of the breakdown of traditional Japanese values that had motivated his conversion. Since I came from a bushi42 family I had to lose the person whom I had respected as a lord. Even my attitude toward my parents changed. The four classes became equal. The bushi felt that when farmers and merchants got equal power all good form had disappeared. Even art and music were destroyed. Confucianism which had ruled the human spirit for many years was also destroyed. The Confucian classics lost their value. All this was a result of the Restoration. In such an age we were raised.43      As well as Christianity’s redemptive promise, many ex-samurai were also attracted to the Western ideas and culture that swirled around the religion and its followers. Irwin Scheiner contends that through its Christian associations, the pro-Shōgunate Sabaku group could access Western knowledge, and saw Christianity as a way toward taking on new “Western social and political norms” and thereby reasserting their power.44 The ex-samurai converts were generally opposed to the Restoration, and critical of the policies of the Meiji government and the unquestioning accumulation of Western knowledge and learning. However, they were not hostile to modernity per se and believed that, to regain its lost status and find its place in a competitive world, Japan needed to attain a deeper understanding of the norms and culture that underpinned that knowledge.45    41 Writing in the early 20th century, journalist and historian of the Protestant church in Japan, Yamaji Aizan wrote that the ex-samurai converts “turned to Christianity largely in an effort to regain lost status.” See Aizan Yamaji, Graham Squires, and A. Hamish Ion, Essays on the Modern Japanese Church: Christianity in Meiji Japan/Yamaji Aizan, with Introductory Essays by Graham Squires and A. Hamish Ion, trans. Graham Squires (Ann Arbor, Mich: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1999), 33. For the samurai’s motivations for conversion, as well as the associations they made with bushidō, See James M. Hommes, “‘Baptized Bushidō’,” 121-127; and  John F. Howes “CHAPTER X. Japanese Christians and American Missionaries,” in Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization, ed. Marius B. Jansen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 345-347. 42 Samurai 43 Wataru Saba (ed.), Uemura Masahisa to Sono Jidai [Uemura Masahisa and his Era], Volume II (Tokyo, 1939- 1941), 9, cited in Scheiner, Christian Converts, 48-49. 44 Scheiner, Christian Converts, 24-25. 45 For a discussion on how ex-samurai Christians saw the benefits of Christianity and Western learning in strengthening Japan see Hommes, “‘Baptized Bushidō’,” 127-130. 85  Academics have focused on the lives and teachings of these ex-samurai converts, and the theological, social and political consequences of their convictions. They give less attention to their engagement with the Western cultural accretions of the faith, such as music, and the extent to which they incorporated these elements into their worldviews. One exception is Takenaka Tōru whose observations about the importance of music in the lives of these individuals has prompted investigations conducted in this study. Takenaka has analysed the geographical backgrounds of TMS graduates as well as subscribers to the specialist magazine, Ongaku Zasshi, and has concluded that samurai from prefectures which had formerly been fiefdoms loyal to the Shōgun were disproportionately represented in their number. Takenaka argues that, alongside Christianity, other aspects of Western culture including music, art and literature, appealed to them because they played a “compensatory function.” He also asserts that “Christianity and the love for Western music were based on the same mentality.”46  While couched in ambiguous language, Takenaka’s claims raise a provocative idea that deserves further exploration. It is possible to interpret it as meaning that both Western music and Christianity were admired mainly because of their associations with Western civilisation. He explains that the “compensatory function” provided by Western music entailed a sense of self-sacrifice, in which a reverent participation in the art form was viewed as an occupation or public duty, and was intended as a means of "sanctifying" a pursuit of “intellectual Westernization.” To illustrate this, he points out that Westernising academics like Toyama Masakazu, the founder of the Nihon Ongakukai (Music Society of Japan), which was closely connected with the Rokumeikan, saw music as a public duty and, in his personal life, would have preferred to frequent kabuki theatre or other forms of traditional Japanese entertainment, rather than enjoy Western music.47   This interpretation is a version of the viewpoint that the Japanese adopted Western music for utilitarian, non-musical motives that was discussed in the Introductory chapter, an explanation which this study sets out to challenge. An academic such as Toyama may well have seen Western music in such terms. Many members of the governing elite certainly  46 Takenaka, “Foreign Sound as Compensation,” 191-193. For the interest shown in the Western painting by pro-Shōgunate samurai, see Dōshin Satō, Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of Beauty, trans. Hiroshi Nara (Los Angeles, California: Getty Research Institute, 2011), 70-90. 47 Takenaka, “Foreign Sound as Compensation,” 192-195. 86  valued the art form mainly for its functional benefits. Performing Western-style waltzes when entertaining foreign dignitaries at the Rokumeikan was an indispensable part of diplomatic protocol, just as military marches were a necessary component of a disciplined army and navy. This case study investigates Takenaka’s claims, and challenges the notion that Western music was taken up primarily out of a sense of duty and offered no emotional solace or satisfaction. By examining articles in the Japanese language print media and some of the writings of Tamura and Uemura, it shows that, in the context of Christianity, Western music was considered to be imbued with a religious significance that ran deeper than a dutiful veneration of Western culture.  Prominent Protestant US missionaries to Japan recognised the power of music in their proselytising efforts, seeing it as “God’s voice that leads us to heaven.”48 Harriet Frances Parmelee (1852-1933), a Congregationalist missionary who was active in Kyoto from 1877, believed that “The first time US Christian missionaries had come to Japan, they had taught that the true soul of music was strongly connected with the spirit of divine worship.”49 Fellow missionaries, Luther Whiting Mason and George Allchin, saw music and evangelisation as inseparable.50 Mason who, as discussed in the Introduction, had been hired by the Meiji government to introduce a system of music education via the singing of shōka in secular public schools was also a Congregationalist, and the teaching of hymns was, for him, integral to his missionary work.51 In August 1880, the US publication, Dwight's Journal of Music praised the efforts of Mason, “the tuneful missionary who has set out to make a musical people of the Japanese,” adding: “…we believe that music is a principle divinely planted in the soul, and that it exists potentially, if not actually, in our common human nature every where [sic].”52 While it is clear, then, that Western missionaries understood and attempted to capitalise on the potential of hymns and religious music to motivate the Japanese to turn  48 This is the author’s translation of the words of Eben Tourjée in “God's Apostle of Music, Dr. Eben Tourjée Musical Pioneer,” in The Etude, April 1947, as cited in Japanese translation in Teshirogi, Sanbika, 179. 49 Author’s translation of the Japanese translation given in “Nihon no Ongaku Kenkyūsha Muke ni,” Gekkan Gakufu, Dai 9 Kan, 11 Go [“For Researchers of Music in Japan,” Monthly Notation 9, no. 11] (November, 1920), 22, cited in Teshirogi, Sanbika, 154-155. 50 Teshirogi, Sanbika, 158-161, and 170. 51 For accounts of Mason and Allchin’s belief in the importance of music to Christian missionary work, see Teshirogi, Sanbika, 150-170.  52 “Music in Japan,” Dwight's Journal of Music, August 14, 1880, 135, cited in Teshirogi, Sanbika, 158-159. 87  toward Christianity, the views of the Japanese converts themselves on the matter are less evident in the primary sources. Articles in the Japanese print media suggest that some recognised the connection. The author of an 1898 piece in the Kirisutokyō Shinbun, for example, wrote “Music should be made use of to deepen the sense of sacredness.” For this, the author advocated employing “the organ alone,” not Japanese music which was “in a backward state.“53 Another article advocating a deep relationship between music and Christianity appeared in April 1903 in the Seikyō Shimpō, a publication of the Orthodox Church whose hymns, according to the author, Ishikawa Kisaburō 石川喜三郎 (1864-1932), were “very doctrinal and…characterized by deep religious feeling….” Ishikawa noted that the connection between religion and shika 詩歌 (poetry and songs) was a matter of importance for “religious people, poets and literary people.”54  The two Protestant ex-samurai “religious people” in this case study considered music to be of utmost importance and a core element of Christianity. In 1917, Tamura Naoomi wrote about this in a chapter entitled Ten no Ongaku to Bokusha (Music of the Heavens and Pastors) in his book Gojyūni no Ishizue Shinkō Shūyō (Fifty Cornerstones: the Cultivation of Belief). He incorporated vivid personal, historical and Biblical references to make an emotional case for music’s centrality to the faith. Tamura recounted occasions on his extensive travels on which he had been stirred by Western music: he had witnessed an unforgettable large-scale musical performance at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 held in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage; and, on a separate occasion, he had heard the Imperial Band in Düsseldorf. To persuade his readers of music’s transformative power, he made rhetorical claims regarding its potency, for example, to rouse Napoleon’s army, destroy the Walls of Jericho, and even to cure disease.  Tamura had been moved by his personal encounters with Western music and made the connection between its emotional power and the divine. His argument that music was  53 Japan Mail Office, JWM, November 19, 1898, 506. On this point, the author of the article was in agreement with Mason and Allchin who held that Japanese traditional music and instruments such as the koto and shamisen were not appropriate for Christian worship. See Teshirogi, Sanbika, 141-143. Teshirogi also links missionary work to commercial efforts to create a market for Western instruments such as the organ and piano. See Ibid., 211-212. 54 Kisaburō Ishikawa,”Shūkyō to Shika” [Religion, and Songs and Poetry], Seikyō Shinpō, no. 536 (Tōkyō: Aiaisha, 1880), 1-4, summarised in Japan Mail Office, JWM, June 6, 1903, 629.  88  integral to the Christian faith was based on the Biblical account of the Nativity. Music, he wrote, was there at the very origins of Christianity because the birth of Christ was both celebrated and announced to the world by the angelic choir in the music of the Heavens. It followed from this that music was central to Christianity:  Thus, I felt deeply that music has an immense power. Other than music there is no way of celebrating the birth of Christ.….Christianity is a religion of music. Christ began his life with music. Christ’s life was music. Christians will therefore revere music.55  Reflecting the views of the missionaries described above, Tamura was emphatic in his belief that music was at the core of Christianity and, for the same reason, should be an indispensable part of the life of every Christian. He wrote with a personal conviction and passion that challenge Takenaka’s claim that ex-samurai treated music dispassionately and felt no sense of emotional engagement with it.  Another individual who was a strong advocate for the centrality of music to Christianity was Uemura Masahisa.56 A prominent member of the ‘Yokohama Band’ with close connections to Kyōritsu Jogakkō, Uemura was a peer of Ibuka and was mentioned as one of the singing samurai encountered at the beginning of this chapter. Described by Teshirogi as “Japan’s first hymnologist,” Uemura was a strong proponent of the use of hymns in Christian worship and made a study of them with an aim to their modification and improvement.57  Uemura did not describe the emotional impact of the hymns in the same personal terms as Tamura. However, like Tamura, he recognised that the connection between music and Christianity was fundamental and grounded in Scripture. In an article entitled Kokon Sanbika 古今讃美歌 (Hymns Past and Present), which appeared in the Fukuin Shinpō in March 1890, Uemura justified his advocacy for the ongoing reform and improvement of  55 Naoomi Tamura, Ten no Ongaku to Bokusha [Music of the Heavens and Pastors], in Gojyūni no Ishizue Shinkō Shūyō [Fifty Cornerstones: the Cultivation of Belief] (Tōkyō: Rakuyōdō, 1917), 252-257. 56 According to Yamaji Aizan, Uemura was: “a son of a shōgunate samurai. He experienced all the suffering of a defeated member of the shōgunate.” See Schneier, Christian Converts, 23. Uemura and Tamura were two of the four pastors collectively referred to as Kirisuto Kyōkai no Yomura (The Four Christian “Muras”), the other two being Uchimura Kanzō 内村鑑三 (1861-1930), Matsumura Kaiseki 松村介石 (1859-1939). 57 Teshirogi, Meiji to Sanbika, 97-105. 89  Japanese hymns. To give force to his argument, he evoked in vivid language the victorious moment in Chapter 14 of Exodus, when Moses, after leading the tribes of Israel across the Red Sea to escape the Pharaoh’s army, commanded the assembled throng to sing praise to Jehovah, while his sister Miriam led the women in dance and song. Connecting this Biblical passage with the need to reform hymns, Uemura continued:  From ancient times, the Church of Christ has positioned hymns as the most important aspect of worship and, because the nature of the songs and music in the past and now differ greatly, in this column, we would like to elucidate and record beneficial issues related to hymns, produce a theory…..and contribute to the improvement of Japan’s hymnology….58  It is clear from the leading role he played in the development of hymns in Japan that Uemura believed music to be vital to Christian worship. In addition to the many essays and articles he wrote on the subject, Uemura dedicated himself to the task of revising and improving hymn collections to make them more accessible and relevant to Japanese Christians. For example, he was instrumental in the publication of the hymnal, Shinsen Sanbika 新撰讃美歌 (New Hymn Selection) in 1888. Teshirogi details the innovative features of this hymnal: it included hymns collated from several Protestant denominations; it featured not only existing hymns, but also new compositions by members of the Sanbika Henshū Iinkai (The Hymn Editorial Committee); and the hymns were of an unprecedented high level, including many in triple time which was thought to be a challenging time signature for Japanese to sing.59 Finally, Teshirogi cites literary critic, Ogawa Kazusuke 小川和佑 (1930-2014), who describes the physical design of the hymnal with its leather binding and gilt tooling as having a modern feel, and being representative of Japan’s modernity in the third decade of the Meiji period (i.e. post 1887).60    58 “Sanbika ni Kan Suru Shiryō” [Materials Related to Hymns], in Uemura Masahisa to Sono Jidai, Dai 4 Kan [Uemura Masahisa and his Era, Volume 4], ed. Wataru Saba (Tokyo: Kyōbunkan, 1966), 384-385. 59 Teshirogi, Meiji to Sanbika, 100-101. 60 Kazusuke Ogawa, “Shi no naka no Seishinshi” [An Intellectual History of Poetry], in Bunmei Kaika no Shi [Poetry of Civilisation and Enlightenment] (Sōbunsha, 1980), 181, cited in Teshirogi, Meiji to Sanbika, 102. 90  These short excerpts from Tamura and Uemura reveal a personal understanding of the centrality and indispensability of Western music to Christian faith and worship. They illustrate a Japanese perspective that is in agreement with the writings of US missionaries such as Mason and Allchin who were convinced of the inseparability of music and Christianity in their evangelising activities. For the ex-samurai converts, music was more than a mere appendage to the religion, or another related facet of Western culture to be revered from a distance. The “same mentality” on which, Takenaka contends, both Christianity and Western music were based, and the “compensatory function” they played were, for these believers, closely connected to a sense of emotional support, motivation and purpose in a time of rapid change.  Case Study Three: Hymns as a Gateway to Western Music The final case study features three individuals who, unlike the others presented so far, were not directly involved in Christian activities. Despite their tenuous connection with the religion, however, early-life encounters with hymns introduced by Christian family members contributed to shaping an interest in Western music, and inspired them to pursue careers as composers and educators. This case study demonstrates that hymns continued to be sung and heard in different environments, outside the usual settings of the missionary school and church. The musical component of hymns in particular caught the attention of talented and enthusiastic young people, and this had a long-lasting influence on the future spread of Western music.  Hymns played a key role in the formal, government-led adoption of Western music. Teshirogi argues that the introduction of hymns was a significant part of Japan’s modernisation process. This is evident in the fact that hymn melodies formed the basis of many shōka that were introduced into schools as well as of military songs. As discussed above, Luther Whiting Mason, a devout Christian and missionary played a pivotal role in the introduction of music education in primary schools. Although strongly associated with Christian worship and therefore seen as a foreign import, Western hymns were not simply adopted as a form of imitation. They were modified to fit the rhythms of the Japanese 91  language and styles of music.61 Protestant hymns set to US folk melodies such as “Jesus loves me” and “There is a happy land” were the first hymns to be translated into Japanese.62  These modifications were crucial to the acceptance of hymns. In addition, their simplicity made them an easily digestible form of Western music. Nomura and Chiba note that hymns translated into the vernacular enabled Japanese to experience the joys of communal singing.63 This would have been a novel experience. Elizabeth May points out that this custom did not exist in Buddhism or Shintō practice. She also suggests that the harmony and rhythm of hymns would have appealed to Japanese, Christian and non-Christian alike, and particularly members of a younger generation who were attracted to other aspects of American culture.64 This case study shows that the musical components of hymns had a specific appeal as a pared down form of Western music, and were a gateway to the appreciation of the art form for three curious and gifted young people.  The initial novelty of Christianity which, according to a cynical Buddhist commentator “….was the result of the craze for things Western that prevailed all over Japan for some years,”65 wore off, and doubts surfaced as to its relevance to, and desirability in a rapidly modernising Japan, particularly in the wake of the 1889 Promulgation of the Constitution and the Imperial Rescript on Education the following year.66 In this environment, the Japanese religious press became defensive and self-critical. Commentators expressed scepticism about cultural activities they considered superfluous to the faith. Criticisms included claims that Christianity in Japan was just another fad or fashion  61 Teshirogi describes the contours of the adoption of hymns: their important relationship with the introduction of shōka, the importance of missionaries and places like Yokohama in this process, the translation of hymns into Japanese, and the modification of hymn melodies to fit the pentatonic scale and modes familiar to the Japanese. See Teshirogi, Sanbika, 6-38.  62 Ibid., 15-25. 63 Chiba, Doremi, 71-72, and Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 457-458. See also Coaldrake, “Building a New Musical Tradition,” 39. 64 May, The Influence of the Meiji Period, 43-46. 65 From an article by published in the new Buddhist magazine, Shin Tendai in 1908. See Japan Mail Office, JWM, October 3, 1908, 526.  66 For a detailed account of the various attacks on Christianity including the ideological debates that arose in the 1890s, see Emily Anderson, Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan: Empire for God (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2016), 27-61, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=1794539; and Albert M. Craig, “Fukuzawa Yukichi: The Philosophical Foundations of Meiji Nationalism,” in Political Development in Modern Japan, ed. Robert E. Ward (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 121, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400871667-005. 92  and that, for example, young men and women were attracted by the ‘fake business’ of teaching English.67 Christian music and hymns were attacked for being sentimental, frivolous, and unnecessary.68 By 1898, even Uemura Masahisa had become frustrated with the hymns that were sung at church and linked this to the fact that Christianity itself had become superficial.69 This disapproval that Christian music, and by extension the religion as a whole, were connected with the most ephemeral aspects of Western culture is clearly expressed in a 1905 article in the Nichiyō Sōshu which questioned whether the religious exuberance of young people was really spiritual or “…the result of overwrought emotions, and religious hysterics.70 These young people dance and sing, laughing and giving thanks to God in turn.” The author asked whether they were “...really moved by the spirit or are suffering from nervous weakness….”71  In light of this growing cynicism, Western-style religious music became, to an extent, decoupled from its religious moorings, while still being recognised as part of a modernising cultural package. Shimamura Hōgetsu 島村抱月 (1871-1918), Editor of Waseda Bungaku, neatly encapsulated this notion in a 1909 article in Taiyō. Lauding the religious atmosphere as “surpassingly delightful,” he continued: “How soothing to the mind are the prayers said, the hymns sung and the grand strain of organ music!....I can enjoy all of this without believing in religion at all….”72 At the same time, the opportunity to hear hymns extended beyond their customary settings. Later chapters will show that the increased availability of Western music in the daily lives of Japanese people were an indispensable element of its  67 See Japan Mail Office, JWM, April 25, 1908, 466, and Ibid., September 7, 1907, 260. 68 Uchimura Kanzō espoused this view and criticised the church in Tokyo for indulging in what he termed “Sentimental Christianity” which involved frivolities such as: “going to tea-parties and church-sociables and there sing[ing] “Blest be the tie that binds”.” See Kanzō Uchimura, Taijirō Yamamoto, and Yōichi Mutō, The Complete Works of Kanzō Uchimura / with Notes and Comments by Taijiro Yamamoto, and Yoichi Muto, (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1971), Volume I, 96.  Also, The Kirisutokyō Shinbun in 1897 urged Christian missionaries to focus their efforts on the worship of God, and not on “conducting bazaars, starting musical societies, even in founding reformatories.” See Japan Mail Office, JWM, July 10, 1897, 38. 69 Ibid., August 20, 1898, 188. The JWM summarised an article in the Fukuin Shinpō, which was based on a report on an address Uemura had given at Nihon Kirisutokyō Seinen Gakusai Dōmei-dankai (The Japan YMCA).  70 In Rikugō Zasshi, Inoue Tetsujirō observed that “Christianity attracts young people…” who saw it as trendy, new and fresh. He provided as an explanation the fact that pastors wore Western clothes and spoke English. See Japan Mail Office, JWM, May 29, 1909, 715-716.  71 Ibid., April 15, 1905, 406.  72 Ibid., October 9, 1909, 458-459. 93  informal spread. Hymns were part of this trend. They continued to be sung, not only in churches and missionary schools, but also in secular, everyday environments.  The three individuals in this case study heard hymns through Christian family members who brought their music home. Composer and educator, Nagai Kōji revealed that one of his first encounters with Western music at the age of about seven was overhearing his uncle sing a particular song to send his nephews to sleep. The circumstances surrounding this experience will be covered in later chapters. However, sometime after he had learnt the song himself, Nagai was able to try it out in company. He related taking part in a gathering in his uncle’s room at which people “were singing the song that he had learnt……with books open, and hands joined….When they sang the familiar song, he joined in in his ‘boy soprano’, and captivated everyone with his voice.”73 This continued every Sunday and, even as the congregation grew in size, Nagai confessed that: “He had no idea why they were gathering, but he enjoyed the singing and was always present.”74  Takenaka points out that as a child Nagai was baptised with his convert parents.75 It is likely that, in his early years, his Christian faith did not run deep. His ignorance regarding the Christian nature of the assemblage, and indifference to the religious connotations of the song, which he noted in retrospect was a hymn, may have been the result of youthful naïveté.76 However, it did not matter. It was the beauty of the music itself that drew him in; the connection with Christianity was secondary. For the young Nagai, the music was something to admire, and strive to understand and master. It is possible to speculate that the uncle believed that his young nephew might at some time be emotionally drawn in by the music and, as a result, take up Christianity seriously in the future when introduced to religious teachings.  Acclaimed composer, Yamada Kōseki, recalled memories of his early life when he lived in Yokosuka near Yokohama with his older brother’s family. His sisters attended missionary school and the brother was a Sunday school enthusiast. With a violin and organ in the home, Yamada was brought up among the sounds of hymns sung in English. He fell in  73 Nagai wrote in the 3rd person singular. 74 Nagai, Koshikata, 5-6. 75 Takenaka, “Foreign Sound as Compensation,” 192-193. 76 He wrote the hymn was “labelled “Hymn Number 90”,” and at the opening line: “Asahi wa noborite, Yo wo teraseri…” [“The morning sun rises, and illuminates the earth…”] See Nagai, Koshikata, 3. 94  love with these, and at the age of six or seven would try not only to imitate them but also create his own mangled versions of the lyrics.77 Later, he moved with his family to Tokyo and attended a Christian school in Tsukiji. His family residence was in a compound overseen by American missionary, Kate Youngman.78 Due to his father’s illness the family were poor but Yamada grew up loved, and able to sing freely. In the evenings he reported being surrounded by hymns sung by his mother and father to the accompaniment of the organ.79 Yamada would have heard hymns on a regular basis and their simple form and harmonic structure lent themselves to youthful experimentation. His attempts to create his own variations exhibit a playful and creative attitude, which carried over later in life to his career as a composer. Hymns were not the only musical influence on Yamada. However, he affirmed the importance of religious music to him explicitly: “A Christian household, hymns and the organ. They connected me to music.”80 Composer, Takagi Tōroku, wrote about childhood encounters with music which had Christian connections. As a young boy, he had a love of the organ that bordered on obsession. This was partly kindled by hearing his elder sisters, students at the Orthodox school, Nikorai Jogakuen (Nicolai Girls’ School), taking turns to play the organ. Their repertoire included pieces from “…primary school shōka collections written on Japanese paper bound in a rectangular shape, and sometimes Catholic hymnals.”81 Another family member who inspired him was an uncle, a Christian convert with the adopted name, Simeon. Takagi recalled a peculiar episode that took place in his early years. Simeon had recognised his nephew’s abilities and, eager to show him off, took the young Takagi on his back in the middle of the night to a “large unfamiliar house,” where there was an organ. Takagi wrote: “I have no memory whatsoever of what or how much I played while sat at the organ; however, I remember that Uncle Simeon and the head of that household had a look  77 Kōsaku Yamada, Harukanari Seishun no Shirabe: Jiden Wakaki Hi no Kyōshikyoku [An Examination of a Distant Youth: Autobiography/Rhapsody of My Younger Days] (Tōkyō: Chūō Kōronsha, 1996), 12. 78 Kate Youngman went to Japan with the American Presbyterian Church in 1873; taught at the Shin-ei girl’s school and established the Kohzensha (dedicated to the propagation of Christianity, education, and charity); and established the Ihaien leprosy hospital in Meguro, Tokyo in 1894. 79 Yamada, Harukanari, 18. 80 Ibid., 20. When he was 14 years old, Yamada converted to Christianity. Teshirogi points out that he was baptised by Tamura Naoomi. Yamada played the organ at Tamura’s funeral in 1935, surprising many of the attendees because of the fact that Yamada was, by then, such an illustrious name in the world of music in Japan. See Teshirogi, Sanbika, 37. 81 Tōroku Takagi, Takagi Tōroku: Ai no Yasokyoku [Takagi Tōroku: A Love Nocturne] (Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Sentā, 2003), 24-25. 95  of pride and were talking amiably.” Takagi did not name the pieces that he was made to play. However, the fact that the incident had been at the behest of his Christian uncle and involved the organ, suggest that they were of a religious nature. The episode made Takagi aware that he had an innate talent. On reflection he wrote: “In my child’s heart, I thought that Uncle Simeon had wanted to take pride in me at that rich house.”82 This self-realisation was a defining moment in the early life of the young composer. As this study will show in later chapters, Nagai, Yamada, Takagi and other young music enthusiasts encountered a variety of genres of Western music during the course of their early lives, particularly as Western musical instruments became more accessible. This included religious music and, through family connections to Christianity, hymns were brought into their everyday domestic surroundings, and became raw material for their young imaginative minds and an important source of inspiration. From Nagai’s admission that he was unaware of the Christian nature of the gathering, to Yamada’s playful modifications of the hymns by substituting his own words, these anecdotes suggest that it was the musical elements - the melodies, harmonies, and rhythms - rather than the Christian message of the lyrics that engaged their attention. Their encounters with hymns produced in them a calling to become involved in Western music, rather than being the prelude to a transformative religious experience.  This chapter has demonstrated that, as a key element of a modernising cultural package built around Christianity, hymns and other forms of religious music enabled a variety of individuals who came into contact with them to navigate the turbulence of the Meiji era and find a place in society. Kinowaki Sonoko used the opportunities provided through her studies at Kyōritsu Jogakkō to become involved in the teaching and performance of music at the school. Reeling from a loss of status after the Meiji Restoration, ex-samurai converts, Tamura Naoomi and Uemura Masahisa, were convinced of the centrality of music to their adopted faith and, through it, gained solace and purpose. Finally, the continuing presence of hymns in other settings, such as the home, inspired individuals who went on to become successful practitioners in that field.   82 Ibid., 21-23. 96  As stated earlier, a major part of Christianity’s appeal is that it came along with other Western cultural elements including music. However, the nature of the connections between Christianity and Western music varied in the case studies observed. For Kinowaki, music was tied to pedagogy which was a central preoccupation of Protestant missionary activity in Japan. For the ex-samurai converts, the connection was deeper. They saw music as an inseparable and integral part of their religion which brought resonance and meaning to it. Finally, for the young music enthusiasts, the religious connotations of the hymns that they heard were less important than the fact that they provided an early encounter with Western music. The three different takes on the adoption of Western music in the context of Christianity presented in this chapter - its connection with pedagogy, its motivational power, and the practicalities of its increasing availability and accessibility - are overarching themes throughout this study, and will be developed in the following chapters.    97     98  Chapter 3 - Entrepreneurship: the Story of a Shop  In an excerpt from Grandmamma’s Letters from Japan, Mary Pruyn described coaching a young pupil, “little Nona,” in the joys of hymn-singing. Initially amused by the girl’s “… wonder and interest when she first heard us singing hymns…,” Pruyn reported that in time Nona was able to happily “…sing one hymn after another, “Jesus loves me,” “Christ is born the Lord of glory,” “There is a happy land,” and parts of several others….”1 Starting several years earlier, fellow American Presbyterian missionary, Julia Carrothers (1845-1914), had been teaching her young pupils some of the very same hymns at the school she had founded in 1869 approximately forty kilometres north of Yokohama along Tokyo Bay in Tsukiji, a foreign enclave in Tokyo sandwiched between the Sumida River and the district of Ginza. In the summer of 1871, Carrothers wrote: “The children were singing “Little Drops of Water,” “Happy Life,” “Jesus Loves Me,” and many other hymns.”2 She had come to Japan with her husband, Christopher (1839-1921), also a Presbyterian missionary. Christopher Carrothers played a role in the establishment of a shop which is the central focus of this chapter.3      1 Pruyn, Grandmamma's Letters, 57-58. 2 Cited in Hiroshi Yasuda, Nikkan Shōka no Genryū: Suru to Karera wa Atarashii Uta o Utatta [The Origins of Japanese and Korean School Songs: Thus, They Sang New Songs] (Tōkyō: Ongaku no Tomosha, 1999), pp 115-116. 3 For a biographical overview of Christopher Carrothers see Kōji Nakajima, “Kurisutofā Karozāsu” [Christoper Carrothers], in Meiji Gakuin Jinbutsu Reiden: Kindai Nihon no Mō Hitotsu no Michi [A Series of Biographies of Meiji Gakuin People: Another Way for Modern Japan], ed. Meiji Gakuin Jinbutsu Reiden Kenkyūkai Shū (Tokyo: Shinkyō Shuppansha, 1998). Recently married, the Carrothers had arrived in Yokohama on 27 July 1869 and, in October, moved from Yokohama to Tsukiji where they set up an English School with fellow American Presbyterian missionary and long term resident, James Curtis Hepburn (1815-1911). Even before the legal restrictions on Christianity were lifted by the Meiji government in 1873, the school had grown in numbers. Julia continued to teach hymns while Christopher instructed and baptised Japanese converts.  One of the those studying English under Carrothers at the school was 18-year-old Isawa Shūji. See Okunaka, Kokka to Ongaku, 91. 99   Figure 3.1. The Girls School Established by Julia Carrothers at Number A6, Tsukiji. Yasunobu Kurata and Seirō Nakamura, “Ginza Jūjiya Sōgyō no Tanmatsu” (The History of the Establishment of Ginza Jūjiya), Vol. 32, accessed October 3, 2021, https://www.ginzajujiya.com/company/. Public domain.  The shop, which Carrothers established in Ginza, Tokyo in 1874 with a group of his Japanese converts and students, was called Jūjiya Shoten 十字屋書店 (Jūjiya Bookshop). It sold Japanese translations of Bibles, hymnals and other Christian literature, and was the first such enterprise in Japan. After a few years and under a new name, Ginza Jūjiya Gakkiten 銀座十字屋楽器店 (Ginza Jūjiya Musical Instrument Shop, hereafter referred to as Jūjiya Gakkiten), the establishment began to retail Western and Japanese musical instruments, scores, how-to-play instruction manuals, and other related products.  Jūjiya Gakkiten embodied the spirit of Meiji modernity in bricks and mortar. Its story straddles different aspects of imported Western culture and thought, as well as Japanese responses to these. The evolution of the shop’s business over time connects the reintroduction of Christianity in 1873 to the adoption of new forms of commerce and the pursuit of novel applications of technology such as modern Western instruments and devices including, eventually, the gramophone player. By highlighting the lives of a network of pioneering individuals involved with the founding and development of Jūjiya Gakkiten, 100  this chapter demonstrates the crucial importance of the commercialisation of Western music in the Meiji period. This is a key aspect of the story of its adoption and spread, and one which has been underplayed in the literature. This research therefore offers an invaluable contribution to the field.  A number of important findings emerge in this chapter. Firstly, Jūjiya Gakkiten’s establishment was connected with the activities of Protestant missionaries and its early business was heavily dependent on the sale of organs and hymnals, demonstrating again the importance of Christianity in the adoption and spread of Western music. Next, Jūjiya Gakkiten was born of the experimental zeitgeist of the Meiji era, and particularly the dynamic and modernising spirit that pervaded Ginza with its access to new ideas. The individuals involved with Jūjiya Gakkiten exhibited an entrepreneurial spirit in adapting to the exigencies of macroeconomic market conditions and changes in consumer tastes as Western music became gradually more familiar to the Japanese public. Specific commercial innovations included import substitution, which made instruments like the organ and the piano more affordable, as well as adept responses to business opportunities that arose as a result of broader societal changes such as an increased interest in military music at times of Japan’s foreign wars. Retailing instruments alongside scores and how-to-play manuals, the shop’s owners exploited synergies of hardware and software, and placed an emphasis on the education of their customers. Finally, as the business developed, certain individuals involved with the shop spent time in Europe and the United States to study trends in the music markets and learn the latest technologies and business practices, and forge links with instrument suppliers.  Meiji Entrepreneurship According to Johannes Hirschmeier, the stability and sustained success of the guild system that had been in place during the Tokugawa period and governed how merchants had operated - adhering to fixed hierarchies and guided by Confucian ethics rather than rational capitalism - stymied merchants’ ability to innovate and change. When Japan was forced to open to trade by the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry’s ‘Black Ships’ in 1852, this entrenched system hindered the ability of merchants to adapt to the new ways of conducting business with Westerners. Hirschmeier attributes this sclerosis to 250 years of Tokugawa seclusion during which Japanese merchants conducted no direct trade with the 101  West. The guilds’ intransigence continued even after they had been formally dissolved by the Meiji government in 1872. However, urbanisation and increased opportunities to do business with foreigners, particularly around the port cities, saw the inevitable emergence of a new type of businessman. This class of merchants was separate from, and often disrupted the business of the guilds by dealing directly with foreigners. These “new men” represented a clear break from the past and were Japan’s first modern entrepreneurs.4 Economist and journalist, Takahashi Kamekichi 高橋亀吉 (1891-1977) described them as “…men of an entirely different kind. One had only to look at their faces to recognize that they were almost like beings of a different species.”5  Hirschmeier’s account focuses on the merchants and bankers, many of whom were former samurai who played leading roles in Japan’s industrialisation and manufacturing. The historiography of the economic, financial and commercial transitions that occurred during the Meiji period concentrates on the macroeconomic level, and considers such matters as the effects of government policies, flows of investment, and workers’ conditions.6 The emergence of smaller businessmen who occupied important niches in Japan’s modernising economy is less well studied. While affected by, and operating within the new macroeconomic conditions, these entrepreneurs were orthogonal to the state and represented alternative sources of opportunity, wealth, and change within Meiji modernisation.  In many cases, their ventures were predicated on Japan’s new access to international trade. Robert Hellyer has documented the activities of land-owning samurai and commoners who planted tea so as to enter the growing global tea trade.7 Simon Partner has written a history of the businessman, Shinohara Chūemon (1809-1891), who moved  4 See Chapter 1, “I. The Merchant Class,” in Johannes Hirschmeier, The Origins of Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan (Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1964), 7-43, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674184336. 5 Kamekichi Takahashi, Meiji Taishō Sangyō Hattatsu Shi [The History of Industrial Development during the Meiji and Taishō Eras] (Tokyo, 1929), 105-106, cited in Hirschmeier, The Origins of Entrepreneurship, 32. 6 Examples of overviews include Christopher Howe, The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy: Development and Technology in Asia from 1540 to the Pacific War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); and Steven J. Ericson, Financial Stabilization in Meiji Japan: The Impact of the Matsukata Reform (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9781501746925. 7 Robert Hellyer, Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America’s Tea Cups (New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2021), https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.7312/hell19910.  102  from his native Kanagawa Prefecture and set up operations in Yokohama in 1859. There, Shinohara was able to plug into the dynamic global silk market. Despite, or perhaps because of, the turmoil of the late-Tokugawa, early-Meiji period, he was able to diversify his business from silk to hotels. Partner highlights the crucial role of Yokohama, a “conduit for technology and ideas,” as the stage on which Shinohara could achieve commercial success, and paints a picture of Yokohama as a place where traditional Japanese hierarchies, both political and economic, were overturned.8  Scholarship on Meiji-era commerce is strong in various areas but its insights have yet to be extended to the music business. Complementing Partner’s case study and adopting a similar microhistorical methodology, this chapter demonstrates how a diverse cast of individuals connected with Jūjiya Gakkiten used the opportunities provided by contact with the West. However, unlike Shinohara who was involved in the established industry of silk production, the founders of Jūjiya Gakkiten took up unprecedented businesses that had strong associations with the West, first in the sale of Christian books and then of Western musical instruments. For this reason, their challenges and opportunities were distinct from those of Shinohara. They had to respond to the constantly fluctuating attitudes of the Japanese toward foreign cultural imports, and to acquire new knowledge and skills. They also differed from him in that their motivation, at least initially, was not commercial gain. As members of the Presbyterian community in Tsukiji, it was the promise of salvation rather than financial profit that inspired them to sell Bibles, hymnals and other Christian books.  Like Shinohara’s Yokohama, Ginza was also an important crucible of innovation. Both places contained or abutted Western enclaves: the Yamate district in the case of Yokohama; and Tsukiji in the case of Ginza. Jūjiya Gakkiten was situated in Ginza Gasu Gai (‘Ginza Gas Street’), the first street in Japan to be furnished with gas-lighting. It was also part of ‘Ginza Bricktown’, a showcase district developed by the Meiji government from 1872. The use of brick was a signifier of progress. Modern and fire-proof, the area was designed to reflect Tokyo’s new-found sense of confidence as the capital of Japan.9 Befitting its modern physical appearance, Ginza was also a hot-bed of new ventures in the early Meiji Period.  8 Partner, The Merchant’s Tale, 212-214. 9 Meiji modernisers believed in a “progress ideology of materials” and that the various construction materials symbolised man’s mastery over nature. They formed a natural hierarchy from wood to iron and brick. See David G. Wittner, Technology and the Culture of Progress in Meiji Japan (London: Routledge, 2007), 100.  103  Enterprising young Japanese were attracted by the opportunities and modern ways of thinking to be found there. Technological, social, and cultural innovations often made their first appearance in or around the district. One example is the importation of coffee-drinking, a pastime as unfamiliar in the Meiji period as listening to and playing Western music. Writing about the introduction of the coffee business in Japan, Merry White contends that districts such as Shinbashi, Ginza and Marunouchi were vital to the success of such new undertakings. She describes Ginza as: “…a ‘bright-light district’ lit by streetlamps and the new electrical lighting in the shop windows….”10 Those districts were Tokyo’s answer to Yokohama’s “showcase of glamorous consumption.”11 They too boasted department stores - places for entertainment as well as shopping - and the railway station buildings that punctuated Japan’s first railway line connecting Yokohama to Tokyo, via Shinbashi. The Founders of Jūjiya Shoten –“a Strange Shop” Figure 3.2. Hara Taneaki (left) and Toda Kindō (No Dates Given). Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol.1. Public domain.  As previously mentioned, Jūjiya Gakkiten had its roots in the work of the Protestant missionaries. In 1874, Hara Taneaki and Toda Kindō, two of Christopher Carrothers’ more energetic students, helped him establish the bookshop, Jūjiya Shoten, to promote and sell translated Bibles, a project that had been encouraged and supported by Bible publishers in Europe and America. Taneaki’s accounts reveal the founders’ strong religious motivations:  10 White, Coffee Life in Japan, 136-137. For another description of Ginza Bricktown as “the centerpiece of the new national capital,” see Louise Young, Beyond the Metropolis Second Cities and Modern Life in Interwar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 200, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1525/9780520955387. 11 Partner, The Merchant’s Tale, 212. 104  “Of course, the business was not profitable. We did not plan to make a profit. [However], we were able to put religious books in the hands of Japanese people far and wide, it was a strange shop.”12 They established the shop only one year after the Meiji government had lifted the long-standing ban on Christianity, and tensions therefore still existed between the missionaries and Japanese converts on one side, and officialdom on the other. This strained atmosphere affected the founders’ choice of shop sign. They feared that a sign with Jesus affixed to a cross might attract the unwanted attention of the authorities. After some prevarication and driven by his conviction to “make Christ flourish...[and]…enter any stage, however dangerous,” Hara insisted that the sign bear the name Jūjiya.13 This was a bold choice as the name combines the characters, Jūji 十字 (cross) and ya 屋 (shop).  As a money-making endeavour, Jūjiya Shoten was a failure from the start. Visitors would peruse the Bibles and other books and, finding the content difficult, leave without making a purchase. At one point, Hara even contemplated giving Bibles away free of charge. To improve sales, he deployed such ruses as enticing customers to the store by offering them tea or lemon water, or sending staff out to peddle the books on the street.14 However, the enterprise had always had its roots in a broader mission and the shop soon became more than a place merely to purchase Christian literature. Hara recorded that a fellow believer opened a reading room at the top of the building that was used for Bible-study and other meetings by Christians of all denominations, and offered “various newspapers and magazines for inspection.”15 Nevertheless, with sluggish sales, Jūjiya Shoten soon ceased to be a priority for Hara, although he remained in contact with its future directors. His projects were far-ranging and included an enthusiasm for education. Among his other endeavours was a Christian school for girls, which he established with Carrothers and whose operation  12 The original source material is Hara Taneaki, “Kirisutokyō Kobunken Uridashi Jidai no Omoide (4) [Memories of the Days of Selling Old Documents on Christianity (4)], Fukuin Shinpō 1918,” June 30, 1932, 15-16. This is cited in Kataoka, Hara Taneaki no Kenkyū, 61. 13 Ibid., cited in Kataoka, Hara Taneaki no Kenkyū, 61. Hara’s version of events is corroborated in Tokawa Yasuie Sanshi, Ginza no Omoide (Memories of Ginza), cited in Mitsuru Ushiyama, “Kanka Zatsuroku,” [Miscellaneous Records Pertaining to Leisure] Ongaku Shinchō 2, no.5 (May 1925): 16-17. 14 Hara Taneaki, “Kirisutokyō Kobunken Uridashi Jidai no Omoide (5) [Memories of the Days of Selling Old Documents on Christianity], Fukuin Shinpō 1919,” July 30, 1932, 7, cited in Kataoka, Hara Taneaki no Kenkyū, 62. 15 This quotation is from “Kyōkai Shinpō” [Church News], Shichiichi Zappō, February 21, 1879 (Tokyo: Fūji Shuppan, 1988), 3, accessed November 15, 2022, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015061691070&view=1up&seq=67. This is also cited in Kataoka, Hara Taneaki no Kenkyū, 61-62.  105  he took over after the sudden departure of the American and his wife from the Mission in 1876.16  Hara’s business partner and the main financial backer behind the establishment of Jūjiya Shoten was Toda Kindō. Like Hara, Toda was a man possessed of the spirit of the age and eager to embrace the new opportunities opened up by the modernising fervour. He was more business-minded than Hara. However, like his partner, his interests and activities also ranged widely. Writing about prominent members of the Tsukiji Band of Christian converts, Aito Ōta speculates that Toda stood out as an eccentric even alongside Hara and the other unusual characters that made up Carrothers’ entourage. A businessman of considerable means, he certainly differed from other Japanese who resided in places of Western-learning like Yokohama or Tsukiji.17  In 1871, Toda spent one year studying in the United States and, as a Yokogaeri no shishinsha (an up-and-coming returnee from America) with aristocratic ancestry, he cut a charismatic figure in the Tsukiji community after his return. Hara described him as a “new (advanced) man,” suffused with the spirit of Bunmei Kaika (literally: he had the attitude that Bunmei Kaika was close at hand), and also a “refined Edo person, urbane, and the owner of a wonderful shop.”18 This shop was Kyūseidō 九星堂, a second-hand goods shop established soon after Toda’s return to Japan. Hara related the story of its founding, another typical tale of Ginza enterprise. Through local-government mismanagement, “a wonderful brick building” in Ginza 3-chome had stood vacant until “…this exemplar of modernity, Toda, took the initiative and opened a shop selling second-hand goods of his own accord.” Hara described some of the other fashionable establishments that were springing up in the district. The one that opened next door, he wrote, was “…the Christian shop that made  16 A correspondence entitled “Extract from letter of Rev. William Imbrie to his father,” dated August 22, 1876, mentioned Hara’s girl’s school. It reported that Hara, who was described as “Mr C.’s [Carrothers’] right hand man, and a person of means,” offered to cede full control of the school to a Mrs. True after the departure from Yokohama of Mrs. Carrothers had left the establishment without a foreign teacher. See Japan, 1859 - 1911, Incoming, Japan Letters, 1873 - 1876, Volume 3. 1873 - 1876. MS, Evangelism in Japan: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions, 1859-1911. Presbyterian Historical Society, Archives Unbound, accessed July 3, 2021, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/SC5112440539/GDSC?u=ed_itw&sid=bookmark-GDSC&xid=728ac279&pg=774. 17 Ōta, Kaika no Tsukiji, 212-234. 18 Ibid., 212. 106  those who heard about it feel slightly uneasy.”19 By this he was referring to his own controversial bookstore, Jūjiya Shoten.  Fellow converts who had been baptised by Carrothers, and owners of neighbouring premises, Toda and Hara moved in the same circles and soon became business partners. In addition to their commercial ambitions, they shared a zeal for change and both men later became involved in political activism through the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement, which had grown after the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.20 Toda promoted the movement and its ideology and, in 1880, he wrote two political novels. These were the first examples of People’s Rights-related political literature (see Figure 3.3). The connection between Christianity and such movements was mentioned in an article that appeared in Kirisutokyō Shinbun in 1899: “The advances of popular rights was associated with Christianity and the cause of Christianity was considerably advanced by this association with popular feeling…. Young men and women, fond of novelty, took delight in the new kind of meetings introduced by foreigners.”21 This excerpt captures the spirit of the 1870s and the types of people such as Hara and Toda who were attracted to this nexus of modern and progressive ideas and activities.22       19 Ibid., 216-218. 20 For overviews of the grass-roots opposition movements in the Meiji Period, see Roger W. Bowen, Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan: a Study of Commoners in the Popular Rights Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); and Stephen Vlastos, “Opposition Movements in Early Meiji Japan 1868-1895,” in The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5, The Nineteenth Century, ed. Marius B. Jansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 367-431, https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521223560.008. 21 Japan Mail Office, JWM, July 16, 1899, 61.  22 Kurata notes that those involved with Hara, Toda and others in the political and religious fervour in Ginza at the time included prominent individuals such as Mori Arinori 森有礼 (1847-1889), who later became Minister for Education in 1885, and Niijima Jō 新島襄 (1843-1890), who founded Dōshisha Eigakkō (Dōshisha English School) in Kyoto in 1875. This became Dōshisha Daigaku (Dōshisha University) in 1920. See Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 35. 107  Figure 3.3. Inside Cover of Toda’s Political Novel. Kindō Toda, Jōkai Haran: Minken Engi (Tōkyō: Nihon Kindai Bungakkan, 1968). Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.23  Driven by a spirit of devotion and adventure, Hara, Toda and their associates were zealous Christians with a passion to spread the Good News, literally, through the sale and distribution of Bibles. At the same time, they took part in more worldly pursuits. Records indicate that they dabbled in ventures as diverse as pawn brokerage, oil, publishing and retail.24 Participation in these activities reveal a desire for agency to shape the new era. By active participation, they gained a sense of identity and strength at a time of great change and uncertainty. Their predisposition toward experimentation and risk-taking continued as the company switched from bookshop to musical instrument store. Jūjiya Shoten becomes Jūjiya Gakkiten  As stated previously, the commercialisation of Western musicmaking as a key part of its adoption and spread has received little attention in the academic literature. Judith Ann Herd recognises the importance of the commercial music industry in fostering public  23 Nine editions were published between 1880 and 1969.  24 Konseki Okamoto, Ginza, published by Shiseidō, cited in Ushiyama, “Kanka Zatsuroku,” 16-17. 108  acceptance of Western music. She draws attention to the year 1897, when Japan started to import gramophone records from America, and “The Yamaha Piano and Organ Company (founded 1897) and others began to mass-produce and sell Western instruments at reasonable prices to Japanese curious to learn exotic Western ways.”25 The origins of commercialisation can, however, be traced back to the mid-1880s, if not earlier, when the sale of Western musical instruments at Jūjiya Gakkiten started to take off. It is not clear exactly when the shop switched from selling books to instruments. However, it was a gradual process that probably took place from the late 1870s.  According to Maema Takanori and Iwano Yūichi, the first businesses selling Western instruments were located in Yokohama and run by and for Western residents from around 1877. As well as trading in imported instruments such as organs and pianos, these establishments also carried out tuning, repairs and sometimes small manufacturing operations. As discussed in Chapter 1, after the founding of the TMS, Japanese students of music such as Komatsu Kōsuke attended concerts at the Public Hall (at times referred to as the Gaiety Theatre) in Yamate, Yokohama. While there, they were drawn to the nearby musical instrument shops. One such establishment, which stood in front of the venue at Yamate 61, was a British-owned instrument shop-cum-ticket-agency called Robinson Mo-tori- Shōkai (Robinson Mortley Business). Proprietors of other similar Yokohama establishments include the Englishman, William Almeida Crane, and the Germans, Oscar Otto Keil and J.G. Doering.26  Regarding the first Japanese individuals to both manufacture and sell Western instruments, Yamaha Torakusu 山葉寅楠 (1851 - 1916), a resident of Hamamatsu City located in modern-day Shizuoka Prefecture, is perhaps the best known due to the subsequent spectacular success of the Yamaha brand.27 Less recognised are the Kantō-based businessmen, Nishikawa Torakichi and Matsumoto Shinkichi, who became suppliers  25 Judith Ann Herd, “Western-influenced ‘classical’ music in Japan,” in David W. Hughes and Alison Tokita, The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, ed. Alison McQueen Tokita, and David W. Hughes (London: Routledge, 2017), 365, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315172354. 26 For a description of these music businesses and the history of piano merchants in Yokohama from 1871, including the names of the proprietors, see Takanori Maema, and Yūichi Iwano, Nihon no Piano Hyakunen: Pianozukuri ni Kaketa Hitobito [One Hundred Years of the Piano in Japan: the People Involved in Making the Piano] (Tōkyō: Sōshisha, 2001), 30-33. 27 Ibid., 37-38. 109  to Jūjiya Gakkiten and played an important role in the shop’s development. Nishikawa set up operations in Yokohama in 1880 and, four years later, began to produce organs on a larger scale. Originally a maker and seller of the shamisen, he worked for some of the Westerners mentioned above who were involved in Yokohama’s musical instrument business, and learnt how to tune, repair, manufacture and sell organs.28 Matsumoto initially worked for, and trained under Nishikawa for six years before establishing his own operations in 1893. He distinguished his business by specialising in the piano trade, which he studied in America in 1900.  As a result of these commercial activities, which had been in train since the 1870s, Western musical instruments gradually became more accessible. However, it was only with the appearance of shops like Jūjiya Gakkiten that this trend started to gain momentum and the instruments were marketed to Japanese people.29 In an article which appeared in the shop’s promotional magazine, Ongaku Shinchō (Music New Wave) in 1925, music critic, Ushiyama Mitsuru 牛山充 (1884-1963) wrote: “The complex and hidden history of Jūjiya is one aspect of the history of the development of music in Japan.”30 The account of the shop’s origins and development shown below is thus an indispensable component of the story of the informal adoption and spread of Western music.        28 Nishikawa and Yamaha were rivals. According to Maema and Iwano, Yamaha’s customers were primarily “schools and public institutions,” while Nishikawa, through his connections with Jūjiya Gakkiten, targeted churches. Both were profitable but, due to Isawa Shūji’s initiatives to introduce singing into primary education, the demand from schools grew, benefiting Yamaha. Nishikawa had the advantage of owning a factory at Yokohama with its access to foreigners, and the latest information and technology as well as materials and parts. On the other hand, in terms of transportation, Yamaha was able to leverage the fact that “Hamamatsu was located roughly between East and West Japan.” Regarding Nishikawa’s apprenticeship with foreign-owned companies in Yokohama, and his rivalry with Yamaha, see Maema and Iwano, Nihon no Piano Hyakunen, 51-54. 29 Founded in Osaka in 1825, Miki Gakki (Mikki Instruments) is arguably the oldest musical instrument shop in Japan. It also started in the publishing industry. It sold Yamaha Organs and Suzuki Violins from the late 1880s. 30 Ushiyama, “Kanka Zatsuroku,” 16-17. 110  Figure 3.4. Jūjiya Biru (Jūjiya Building) in the Meiji Period (No Date Given). Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol.1. Public domain.  Kurata Shigetarō  Jūjiya Gakkiten owed its success to the pioneering spirit of its first director, Kurata Shigetarō. The enterprising mood that ran through Jūjiya Shoten and its founders, Hara and Toda, also energised Kurata, who took over operations during the transitional period from bookshop to instrument shop. Unlike Hara and Toda, Kurata came from humble origins and did not convert to Christianity.31 The story of how he met Hara and was hired to work at Jūjiya Shoten gives an insight into Kurata’s adventurous and headstrong nature and is illustrative of the turbulence of the Meiji period. Kurata had decided to sell his homestead in Toyama Prefecture and move to Tokyo with his two sisters. His ambition was to attend military school in the capital and join the navy. The allure of the city and the military appealed to many young men. Acceptance to the army or navy would mean a guaranteed income, a sense of upward mobility and the pride of joining a new quasi-samurai warrior class.32 Kurata’s decision to uproot may also have partly been a consequence of the  31 Kurata Yasunobu, interview by author, Tokyo, July 8, 2021. See also, Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 14-15. Archival material on Kurata’s early life is more limited than that for Hara and Toda. 32 Kurata, interview. 111  economic turbulence of the early Meiji period and the uncertain outlook for those in the agricultural sector.33 His military ambitions, however, were thwarted; he failed the school’s entrance examination due to poor eye-sight. Distraught, he attempted suicide by throwing himself into the moat of the Imperial Palace. Hara, who was in the vicinity at the time, heard the commotion and, out of sympathy, hired him to work at Jūjiya Shoten.34 Figure 3.5. Kurata Shigetarō (No Date Given). Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 1. Public domain.   At first, Kurata worked enthusiastically at Jūjiya Shoten, helping Hara and Toda to “stabilise” the flagging bookshop.35 However, sluggish sales eventually forced the owners to explore other avenues and diversify their business. The precise reasons for their decision to switch to selling musical instruments are uncertain. However, it is clear that their Christian  33 E. Sydney Crawcour, ‘‘Economic Change in the Nineteenth Century,’’ in The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5, The Nineteenth Century, ed. Marius B. Jansen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 608-609, https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521223560.011. 34 See Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 14-18; and Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 1. Okano points out that there is uncertainty surrounding Kurata’s date of birth and therefore the age at which he met Hara. It is thought that he was born in 1859 and died in 1923, aged 64. Okano speculates that, considering the various regulations around entry into the navy, Kurata’s meeting with Hara would most likely have been sometime between 1876 and 1879, when Kurata was between the ages of 17 and 20. By this time, Jūjiya Shoten had been in business for a number of years, and would therefore have accumulated a comfortable financial margin to enable Hara to hire Kurata.  35 Ibid., Vol. 1. 112  connections, which brought them into contact with Western music in the form of hymns, would have facilitated this transition. For a shop that already sold hymnals, branching out to organs was not such a huge leap.36 The change was also typical of the founders’ willingness to explore different avenues, however uncertain. Hara and Toda’s Christian faith was not all-encompassing as their involvement in a variety of other activities demonstrates. As argued in the preceding chapter, Christianity was the central pillar of a modernising package and converts used their connections to access a range of other aspects of Western culture. Western music was still novel, and commercial involvement with it would have presented an exciting challenge for the founders of the shop.  The first instruments Hara, Toda and Kurata sold were organs for churches. As discussed in the previous chapter, the organ was one of the earliest Western instruments to be commonly heard in Meiji-era Japan. The instrument was prevalent, particularly in cosmopolitan places like Yokohama. The Scottish academic and educator, William Gray Dixon described hearing the “strains of an American organ discoursing a Christian hymn” on the very morning of his arrival in the port city in 1876.37 While mainly associated with the playing of hymns in church, smaller variants, known as baby organs or reed organs, were also used for domestic musicmaking by foreign residents. Also in 1876, Clara Whitney described attending a musical gathering in which she gave a performance on the reed organ.38 The first musical instrument repair and retail establishments in Yokohama dealt mainly with organs and pianos. In the 1870s, however, pianos were roughly twenty times more expensive than organs, making the latter the instrument of choice for private individuals and, after group singing had been mandated in primary schools, for the accompanying of shōka.39     36 Okano describes the trajectory from Christianity, to Bibles, to hymns, to music, to instruments as “very natural” See Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 43. 37 Dixon, William Gray Dixon, The Land of the Morning: An Account of Japan and Its People, Based on a Four Years’ Residence in That Country: Including Travels into the Remotest Parts of the Interior / by William Gray Dixon, M.A., Formerly One of the Professors in the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokiyo; with Illustrations Drawn on Wood by J. Bayne, and a Map (Edinburgh: Jame Gemmell, 11 and 15 George IV Bridge, 1882), 243. 38 Whitney, Clara’s Diary, 174. 39 Whereas a domestically produced organ would typically be sold for around 45 yen, a piano would cost around 1,000 yen. See Maema and Iwano, Nihon no Piano Hyakunen, 36. 113   Figure 3.6. A “Baby Organ” with 39 Keys, Manufactured by the US Company, Mason (around 1880). Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol.7. Public domain.  Toda and Kurata were familiar with organs. As a Christian bookstore, Jūjiya Shoten received regular visits from missionaries, some of whom had brought their own portable organs to Japan to accompany the singing of hymns for the purpose of worship and evangelisation. The founders would therefore have been among the first Japanese to witness such performances.40 According to Okano, Jūjiya Gakkiten initially procured second-hand organs from long-term foreign residents who were departing Yokohama. However, Kurata also attended auctions where he could examine new instruments that had arrived by ship. On their return from the port city to Ginza, Hara and Kurata would visit Nishikawa’s workshop-cum-factory Nishikawa Fūkin Seizōsho (Nishikawa Organ Manufacturing) in Hinodecho, Yokohama, in order to have the organs they had procured repaired and refitted. Nishikawa also sometimes used these instruments to reverse engineer prototypes, an  40 Ibid., Vol. 4. Kurata writes: “Hymns were an important activity in the worship of God and the support of belief, and the organ was a vital instrument for their accompaniment....They [Hara and Kurata] would have been two of the first to witness the performances of singing to the music of organs that had arrived in Japan by boat.” 114  exercise that helped him to eventually establish himself as Japan’s first domestic organ manufacturer and to set up a monopoly in the Kantō area.  From 1887, Nishikawa started to supply high-quality inexpensive organs to Jūjiya Gakkiten. This import-substitution made organs, and later other instruments, more affordable. This was a factor in stimulating the spread of Western music among the Japanese over the coming decades. Initially, however, several practical problems impeded the organ business, including difficulties in the transportation of the cumbersome instruments, as well as limited access to the imported parts necessary for their repair and manufacture. Demand was low too. In the 1880s, organs, organists and sheet music were still a rarity and confined primarily to churches and the homes of private wealthy individuals.41  Jūjiya Gakkiten’s involvement in the publication and sale of hymnals facilitated its organ business. The first hymnal in Japanese was published in 1874. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Uemura Masahisa among others worked to update and improve hymnals to make them more accessible and relevant to Japanese Christians. Jūjiya Gakkiten published a revised Presbyterian hymnal in 1876 and another in 1881.42 The proliferation of new hymnals stimulated demand for church organs and exploiting this kind of synergy became central to the shop’s business strategy. According to the company history, as well as the ‘hardware’ (instruments), Jūjiya Gakkiten also sold the ‘software’, which included sheet music - in this case hymnals - and how-to-play manuals and guides for the instruments.43  Two developments in the early-to-mid 1880s boosted Jūjiya Gakkiten’s nascent musical instrument business. One was the additional demand for organs in primary schools to accompany the singing of shōka, which the government had made mandatory in 1882. Another was the increasing recognition by Japanese elites of the importance of Western music in entertaining Western dignitaries. This coincided with the opening of the  41 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 51-52. For a narrative account of Nishikawa origins as a manufacturer of shamisen and the development of his relationship with Jūjiya Gakkiten, see Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vols. 5 and 6. Kurata writes: “At that time, the market for organs was very much limited to the elite class and the church. Of course, dealing in Bibles, Jūjiya had connections with many churches, and this clearly expanded its opportunities for business….However, Nishikawa did not simply want to dedicate himself to the manufacture of organs; he was also trying to build up his status so that he could establish himself as a businessman who was thinking about the projected demand for the organ business in Japan.” 42 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 40-41. 43 Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 6. 115  Rokumeikan, the venue dedicated to this aim, in 1883, and the establishment of the Dai Nihon Ongakukai (Japan Music Society) in 1884.44 Despite the gradual awakening to Western music, however, the impact on Jūjiya Gakkiten’s music business in general remained limited and sales only really started to pick up from the beginning of the 1890s.45 To remain solvent in chastened economic times, the shop required a product with immediate appeal to galvanise sales in the short term. Fortunately, just such an item materialised in 1884 in the form of a novel device known as the shikōkin, which is considered in detail in the next chapter.  Products and Business Model Tables 3.1 and 3.2 show the main music-related items and publications sold by Jūjiya Gakkiten from around 1892 to the end of the Meiji period. The items, prices, and notes have been tabulated based on lists provided by Okano. They give a flavour of the wide variety of musical genres to which the shop catered, and reveal interesting facets of the shop’s business model. Table 3.1. Music-related Items from around 1892 to around 1907. Ben Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden: Kyoto Jujiya no Okamisan (The Story of Tanaka Yūki: The Proprietress of Jūjiya in Kyoto) (Tokyo: Ongaku no Tomosha, 2002). Reproduced under fair-use principle. Item Price  Notes Imported Accordions (Höhner) From 3 to 20 yen 16 Varieties Self-learning for the Accordion  Two volumes Western-style flute (Harmonica, Höhner) From 30 zen to 2 yen  Self-learning for the Flute  One volume Edison Phonograph From 18 to 400 yen About 7 varieties A newly invented instrument, the yōkin (zither, smaller than a koto) Standard: 3 yen, 50 zen. Superior: 5 yen, 50 zen  Imported Flageolets   Self-learning for the Flageolet  One volume Gekkin (Moon Guitar, Moon Zither)   Shakuhachi (Tozanryu) (Japanese wind instrument, Tozan-style)    44 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 39 and 26, respectively. 45 Ibid., 52. Okano writes: “Domestically produced organs started to sell well in the second half of the Meiji 20s [from around 1892].” 116  Suifūkin (A cheaper variant of the shikōkin) 20 sen to 60 sen 5 varieties Tesshinkin (Glockenspiel)   Gekkin   Piano (Nishikawa)  Still almost no sales Orgol   Military Instruments: clarinet, bass, altophone, horn, cornet, castanets, triangle, cymbals, large and small taiko, batons, music stands, five-lined paper   Many in the line up from 1897  Table 3.2. Publications Sold from 1897 through the End of the Meiji Period (1912). Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 59-60. Reproduced under fair-use principle.  Item Notes Shōka for Infants Ten volumes in total; Noshō Benjirō, Tamura Torazō ed. Contained collections of contemporary nursery rhymes that were suitable for education. Sold very well. Piano practice book Translation of the Bayer one Shōka for schools Two volumes; Meiji Ongakukai Shōka for the moral training canon  New style shōka One volume Secondary-level Mono-tonal Shōka One volume New shōka Two volumes; Applicable to the curriculum Advanced Songs One volume; made the 二十数版 Shōka for young people Eight volumes; Curriculum series Middle school shōka collection Two volumes Yamada shōka collection One volume New Education Shōka One volume Round-singing Poly-tonal Shōka  One volume Latest Intermediate Shōka Collection  Self-learning for the Organ One volume Self-learning for the Violin One volume Collection of Hauta (Short love songs) More than ten volumes Nogi Taishō Songs Applicable to the curriculum; For 1st Grade Primary School  117  The tables reveal the extent to which the shop successfully combined sales of both hardware and software: the instruments, and the sheet music and how-to-play manuals. The manuals listed are entitled Hitorimanabi (literally ‘Learning alone’ and translated as ‘Self-learning’), and their publication demonstrates Jūjiya Gakkiten’s commitment to education, which is also evident in the wide variety of shōka collections for schools in Table 3.2. This strong focus on education, which persisted throughout the company’s history, was consistent with the objectives of the founders of Jūjiya Shoten, which, as mentioned earlier, was not only a bookshop, but also a venue for reading and discussion.46 An illustration of the educational leanings of Jūjiya Gakkiten’s business approach can be seen in the shop’s activities in the Taishō and early-Shōwa Periods when the it entered the 16-mm short-film market under the then director, Kurata Shigetarō Sansei 倉田繫太郎三世 (Kurata Shigetarō the 3rd). Within the shop, he established the Jūjiya Film Department which produced and sold films for science education along with easy-to-operate projectors for schools.47  Also evident in Table 3.1 is Jūjiya Gakkiten’s willingness to experiment with new technologies and promote novel forms of entertainment and culture. The short-film business is one example of this. Another is the shop’s early entry into the market for recorded sound. While the first imports of mass-produced gramophone players and records were not until the end of the Meiji Period, Table 3.1 shows that Jūjiya Gakkiten was selling the Edison Phonograph from an early stage. From 1907, the shop signed a sales contract with the firms, Sale Fraser from Yokohama, and America Victor from the United States.48  Finally, the item lists reveal Kurata’s instinctive ability to react to the changing mood and connect the business to current events. From the mid-1890s, Jūjiya Gakkiten started to sell instruments and scores related to military music. Military songs and marches were extremely popular around the time of Japan’s victories over the Qing Dynasty in 1894-1895  46 Kurata, interview. This philosophy went much further than simply providing manuals, however. It derived from the principles of the founding members and has been a constant until today. Hara was interested in education. As mentioned earlier, in addition to opening a bookstore to educate the public about Christianity, another of his ventures was the establishment of a girl’s school. 47 For a description of the company’s forays into the 16mm short film business, see Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vols. 19-22. 48 For Jūjiya Gakkiten’s contribution to the development of the gramophone business in Japan see Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 14. Kurata writes: “From 1907, Jūjiya’s gramophone sales took off after signing an exclusive distributorship with Fraser and America Victor.” He notes that the fact that Jūjiya Gakkiten was responsible for 90% of Victor’s Japan sales contributed greatly to the growth of the shop up to 1923. 118  and the Russian Empire in 1904-1905. At these periods of heightened national celebration, music played a vital role in uniting the public and making them feel included in the war effort. This had the effect of popularising Western music more generally. Chiba Yūko, for example, notes the important role of military songs in bringing ordinary Japanese into contact with Western music.49 At the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, Kurata spied a commercial opportunity in the groundswell of patriotic sentiment and published a compendium of military songs called Taishō Gunka (Victory War-song) Series. This ran to seven editions between 1894 and 1897. One of the most popular songs from the collection was Yūkan naru Suihei (The Brave Sailor), which was later incorporated in the curriculum for schools.50 Jūjiya Gakkiten also obtained the copyright to military composer, Setoguchi Tōkichi’s 瀬戸口藤吉 (1868-1941) hit song, Gunkan March (Warship March), whose popularity lasted until after World War II.51  In the company’s history, Kurata Yasunobu speculates that, had he still been running the shop, Hara Taneaki, as a devout Christian, might not have approved of the publication and sales of military song collections that glorified victories in war. However, Hara and Kurata Shigetarō were reacting to changing circumstances and developing new types of business. Kurata’s turn to military songs echoed Hara’s resolve to sell Bibles after the ban on Christianity had been lifted two decades earlier.52 From this perspective, the two men could be viewed as cynical opportunists blown along by, and capitalising on the fashions and fads of the time. However, Hara desired to spread the word of God, even at the risk of financial failure and the opprobrium of the authorities. It is also difficult to imagine that Kurata, while seizing the business opportunity offered by military victory, was not himself swept along by  49 Chiba, Doremi, 113-114. Also, Nomura mentions that Western-style songs became popular after the military songs of the Sino-Japanese War were repurposed as school songs. After the Russo-Japanese War too, collections of school songs such as Yōchien Shōka (Schools songs for Kindergarten) based on military songs gained popularity. See Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 506. 50 Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 15. 51 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 45-46. Okano writes: “However, later, the navy took over the copyright. If Jujiya had held onto the copyright until after the War [World War II],…they would have made a huge amount of money…. After his retirement, Setoguchi became a consultant to Tokyo Jūjiya, and later became the regular conductor of the orchestra of the Kyoto Imperial University, which would often visit Kyoto and hold rehearsals on the 3rd floor of the Kyoto Jūjiya head-office….” 52 Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 15. Shun’ichi Teshirogi also notes that in the context of the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, hymns were repurposed as shōka and then as military songs, and spread throughout Japan. In other words, things developed differently from the initial intentions of the missionaries who used music to spread Christianity in Japan. See Teshirogi, Sanbika, 208.  119  a sense of national pride, especially considering the strong motivation to join the navy that had brought him to Tokyo in the first place.  Like the founders of Jūjiya Shoten before him, Kurata Shigetarō exhibited entrepreneurial flair and made a commercial success of Jūjiya Gakkiten at a time when the awareness of Western music was still limited and the sale of Western instruments was in its infancy. The shop sold exotic imports and marketed them to fit the constantly changing demands. By partnering with domestic suppliers such as Nishikawa, and later Matsumoto, he also helped to facilitate import substitution and promote the domestic manufacture of organs and pianos, which eventually became a global industry for Japanese manufacturers in the 20th century. Making instruments affordable to more Japanese was a vital step in the spread of Western music.  The International Dimension of Jūjiya Gakkiten’s Business By the first decade of the 20th century, it had become necessary for Jūjiya Gakkiten to diversify its product line-up and, for that, it was necessary to look abroad. As a shop dealing in products that had their origins in the West, gaining access to knowledge about the musical instrument business in the United States and Europe, and fostering overseas connections were vital to its development. Kurata Shigetarō did not venture overseas himself. However, some of the subsequent generation of directors and associates spent time in the West, studying specific technical knowledge related to instrument manufacture, learning Western ways of doing business through hands-on experience, and building and maintaining a network of overseas suppliers that provided a platform for the business to continue to diversify and thrive in the first few decades of the 20th century.  Jūjiya Gakkiten’s international outlook was a specific instance of the broader phenomenon of learning from the West that underpinned Meiji modernisation. Placing the adoption of the domestic sewing machine in Japan into context, Andrew Gordon characterises the 19th-century contact between Japan and the United States as a “…history of uplift and enlightenment featuring generous American tutors and eager Japanese tutees…in a world of two-way but asymmetrical exchange.”53 After a period of attempting  53 Andrew Gordon, Fabricating Consumers the Sewing Machine in Modern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 14, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1525/9780520950313. 120  to repel Westerners from their shores under the slogan Sonnō Jōi 尊王攘夷 (Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarian), Japan’s rulers came to the realisation that, unless the country learnt from the Western powers, it risked colonisation by one of them. In 1868, the Meiji government set out a five-article Charter Oath. This advocated rather vague and broadly egalitarian and democratic principles, and urged the banishment of “Evil customs of the past.” The fifth article, however, was a specific injunction for: “The people to actively seek knowledge from outside the country so as to protect and strengthen the imperial rule.” The Japanese, thus, set out to scour Europe and the United States for the best systems and organisations in core areas such as the military, business, government and education.54 To this end, the Meiji government employed a combination of approaches. One was to invite Western experts in diverse fields to live and work in Japan as teachers, another was to garner Western knowledge from translated texts, and a third was to send Japanese delegates and students abroad.55  Overseas study took a variety of forms ranging from dispatching high-level diplomatic missions to leading Western nations, to sending students overseas for academic study. The literature in this area focuses on formal diplomatic missions and state-supported overseas study. The missions, which started as early as the 1850s when the Shōgun sent groups of daimyō and samurai to the United States, became a matter of urgent state policy from the early 1870s. In 1871, the Meiji government established a mission to visit the United States and leading European nations. Led by statesman, Iwakura Tomomi 岩倉具視 (1825-1883), this lasted until 1873 and was extensive in scope.56 The United States was a popular destination, particularly for students, and the number of private individuals going there increased dramatically between 1873 and 1896. Less-expensive than Europe, the post-bellum United States was considered a modern and technologically advanced society with  54 See David E. McNabb, “Commerce and Industry in the Meiji Period,” in A Comparative History of Commerce and Industry, Volume II (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 137-139. 55 See Ardath W. Burks, “6. Japan’s Outreach: The Ryūgakusei,” and Minoru Ishizuki, “7. Overseas Study by Japanese in the Early Meiji Period,” in Ardath W. Burks, The Modernizers: Overseas Students, Foreign Employees, and Meiji Japan, ed. Ardath W. Burks (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985), 145-186.  56 For treatments of this mission, see Ian Nish, The Iwakura Mission in America and Europe: A New Assessment (Richmond: Japan Library, 1998).  121  high-level academic institutions, particularly in practical subjects such as agriculture, mechanics, and engineering.57  The literature focuses on overseas studies of the elites. The scholarship that explores self-motivated Japanese who went to the West to learn specific knowledge and skills for self-improvement or in the interests of a particular business enterprise is more sporadic. Susanna Fessler has looked at Meiji-era travel writing by Japanese individuals who headed overseas, some for the purpose of study. The primary accounts taken from travel diaries known as nikki bungaku (diary literature) which Fessler has selected, however, are by writers who provide lyrical descriptions of their overseas adventures. They include novelists, Nagai Kafu 永井荷風 (1879-1959), Shimamura Hōgetsu 島村抱月(1871-1918), and Tokutomi Rōka 徳冨蘆花 (1868-1927). The accounts of ordinary, pragmatic Japanese who went overseas to gain specific skills and experience are absent. This section addresses this lacuna and provides case studies of three individuals connected with Jūjiya Gakkiten who spent varying lengths of time in the United States and Europe and brought what they had learnt back to Japan to benefit their businesses. The overseas studies and experiences of such people is one important vector by which practical knowledge entered Japan. The individuals presented here are Matsumoto Shinkichi, a piano manufacturer and supplier to Jūjiya Gakkiten; Tanaka Denshichi, the son-in-law of Kurata Shigetarō and founder of the Kyoto branch, Jūjiya Tanaka Shoten; and Kurata Hatsujirō, the eldest son of Kurata Shigetarō. They differed in terms of their backgrounds, skills and motivations. Matsumoto was the only one who went abroad specifically to study, in his case the technology of piano repair and manufacture. Tanaka lived and worked in California for a period of about 15 years. However, strong commitments at home prevented him from settling in the United States. Finally, after taking over the running of Jūjiya Gakkiten from his father, Hatsujirō’s motives for travelling overseas were not only to study business, but also to establish, develop and maintain relationships with overseas suppliers in Europe and the United States.   57 Burks, The Modernizers, 152-153. For Japanese students in Great Britain, see Noboru Koyama, Hatenkō “Meiji Ryūgakusei” Retsuden: Daiei Teikoku ni Mananda Hitobito [Unprecedented Biographies of Meiji Overseas Students: People Who Studied in the British Empire] (Tōkyō: Kōdansha, 1999). 122  The eldest son of a farming family, Matsumoto Shinkichi became acquainted with Nishikawa Torakichi through mutual family connections and, from 1887, he was hired to work for Nishikawa’s organ business where he developed an advanced musical sense and technical capabilities. In 1893, he left to set up his own instrument repair and retail shop in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. Rather than compete in the organ market with the already-established Nishikawa and Yamaha brands, however, Matsumoto decided instead to specialise in the manufacture and sales of pianos, a business hitherto untried by Japanese companies. In 1900, he went to the United States to study piano manufacture.  Matsumoto kept a diary of his short sojourn in the United States between July and October. He described the hardships as well as his hopes and triumphs, and the diary contains the gritty details of his daily life. After a month in Chicago, Matsumoto moved to New York to undergo his apprenticeship. There, he lived a frugal existence, renting a room in Brooklyn close to the piano factory of Bradbury Company and its genial 73-year-old president, F.G. Smith, who became his mentor. Matsumoto gained hands-on experience in all aspects of piano manufacture: from the construction of mechanisms and soundboards to painting, lacquering, and polishing. He also passed his tuning examination, and even found time to conduct business for his own company back in Japan, visiting an organ factory in Pennsylvania to negotiate a global distribution contract.  The relationship between Matsumoto and F.G. Smith is another example that illustrates the importance of Christian connections in building up the commercial networks around Western music. Matsumoto was a Methodist and observed in his diary that F.G. Smith was a coreligionist. Although Matsumoto did not state it explicitly, it was very likely on this basis on which their acquaintance was formed. The two men certainly had a cordial relationship. On August 31, Matsumoto professed to being “moved to tears” by Smith’s  “huge favour” of sanctioning his apprenticeship at the factory. For his part, Smith, on September 18, exhibited solicitude for his young Japanese charge. Regarding a meeting between them, Matsumoto wrote: “We talked a lot about my [good] attitude. Smith apologised for my inconveniences.”58    58 Shinkichi Matsumoto, “Tobei Nikki” [Diary of my Travels to the United States], 76-87, accessed November 15, 2022, https://archives.kimitsu.jp/browse.aspx?CNo=7394. 123  Matsumoto’s hard work in America paid off and, after his return to Japan, he built a reputation as an accomplished manufacturer, tuner, and repairer of pianos. According to Jūjiya Gakkiten’s company history, “...his organs and pianos were considered to have good sound quality, and buoyant sales continued.” They garnered prizes at the 5th Domestic Exposition in Osaka in 1903, boosting the reputation of his brand and allowing him, in 1904, to invest in the incorporation of the company Matsumoto Gakki Gōshi Kaisha and set up a shop, Matsumoto Gakkiten, in Ginza to sell directly to the public. The peak of Matsumoto’s business was the seven years between 1907 and 1914 during which he sold over 100 pianos a year.59   Tanaka Denshichi, the future husband of Kurata Shigetarō's daughter, Yūki, spent about 15 years in California from 1891. According to Okano, Tanaka’s connections with Jūjiya Gakkiten date back to 1880 when, aged about 13, he was an employee at the shop. A ‘Letter of Approval’ written by Kurata and dated April 22, 1891 praised Tanaka and mentioned that he had a good knowledge of the product range and was an asset to the shop.60 Although source material about his life in the United States is limited, it is clear that Tanaka had a variety of business experiences while there. He was initially employed by the American branch of Japanese trading company, Fūji Gōshigaisha (Fūji Limited Partnership) in 1893. After that, he became involved with the development of Nihon Mura (Japan Village) in San Francisco, and finally worked at a shop in Oakland selling Japanese imports, purchasing the establishment at the age of 37.61 Tanaka retained strong ties with Jūjiya Gakkiten during his sojourn in California, and found himself criss-crossing the Pacific, particularly after his marriage to Yūki in 1898. In 1895, he had been asked by Kurata to set up a branch shop in Kyoto. However, he initially had reservations. He thought that selling musical instruments was women’s work, with the implication that he considered the running of the branch shop would best be left to his  59 For a narrative account of Matsumoto's business - from his apprenticeship with Nishikawa, his sojourn in the United States in 1900, to the destruction of his shop in Great Kanto earthquake of 1923 - see Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vols. 9-11. Regarding Matsumoto's success at the 1903 exposition, Kurata writes: “This created favourable conditions for his brand and, in 1904, he was able to garner support from investors, establishing Matsumoto Gakki Gōshi Kaisha 松本楽器合資会社, and setting up a direct sales point in Ginza, Matsumoto Gakkiten.” 60 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 32-34. 61 Ibid., 66. 124  then-fiancée, Yūki. To compound his doubts about repatriating, the business in Oakland was booming, buoyed by a craze for Japanese designs, arts and craftworks. According to a publication for the 70th anniversary of the foundation of Jeugia, “It was the time when Japanese porcelain and bamboo goods were flying off the shelves in the US…. If that shop had continued he might have made a successful business there.”62 As it was, however, inauspicious circumstances meant that the shop in California could not continue. The Great San Francisco Earthquake in 1906, and race riots in 1906 and 1907, made life there untenable, particularly for Asian immigrants, forcing Tanaka to finally move back to Japan.63  Tanaka benefitted greatly from his experience in the United States and applied the knowledge and skills he had acquired to the management of the new shop in Kyoto, Jūjiya Tanaka Shoten which he co-founded with Yūki. Okano points out that Tanaka had always been favourably disposed to the West. Even before he left Japan, he felt at home in Tsukiji and Ginza with their atmosphere of openness to foreign culture. There, he had attended church, and studied English and Western business practices. He revered the United States and considered it an advanced country. He admired its ‘pioneering spirit’ which he adopted as he honed his business skills. Tanaka thus became a pioneer himself and, like Hara, Toda, and Kurata before him, “a bearer of Japan’s new age.”64   Tanaka’s overseas business experience prompted Kurata Hatsujirō, Shigetarō’s eldest son, to pursue his own overseas studies. Tanaka and Hatsujirō had been rivals to take over the running of Jūjiya Gakkiten. However, as Tanaka had been tasked with setting up and running the new Kyoto branch, succession of the business in Ginza fell to Hatsujirō. After graduating from Shōgyō Kōkō (Commercial High School), Hatsujirō used his overseas connections and went to San Francisco in around 1905 to study all practical aspects of Western-style business. He learnt the fundamentals at Tanaka’s shop in Oakland. This  62 Taken from an article entitled “Ongaku 100 Nenpyō/Jūjiyawa” [Music 100 Year Report/The Story of Jūjiya], in a publication for the 70th anniversary of the foundation of Jūjiya in Kyoto, cited in Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 66. 63 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 67. 64 Ibid., 67-68. 125  included how to negotiate with foreigners and draw up contracts. Like Tanaka, the earthquake of 1906 forced him to return to Japan.65  From around 1906, Jūjiya Gakkiten successfully expanded its overseas dealings despite financially straitened circumstances in the wake of the Russo-Japanese war. This was made possible for a number of reasons. Firstly, Hatsujirō’s experience in the United States and his newly acquired English skills enabled him to become directly involved with the development of new business. His English ability, for example, meant that Jūjiya Gakkiten could circumvent the Osaka-based trading company which it had hitherto used as an intermediary in the importation of instruments. Secondly, Jūjiya Gakkiten’s ongoing commercial connections with Western customers, particularly those associated with Christian churches, meant that the shop was able to build up a stock of foreign capital, particularly US dollars which it could use to expand its imports from US suppliers. Through these same Western contacts, Hatsujirō could also gather intelligence regarding the latest trends in the musical instrument market overseas, allowing the shop to “…develop its business of importing new instruments and music from the rest of the world.” This solid platform enabled Jūjiya Gakkiten to grow commercially in the late-Meiji and early-Taishō periods.66  Figure 3.7. Kurata Hatsujirō (No Date Given). Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol.16. Public domain.   65 Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 16. Kurata writes: “It is thought that Hatsujirō learned many things from Denshichi, starting with English studies, and how to negotiate with foreigners as well as how to draw up contracts.” 66 Ibid., Vols. 16, and 25. 126  Figure 3.8. Jūjiya Gakkiten in around 1907. Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol.13. Public domain.  Based on a list provided by Okano, the music-related items sold around 1907 are displayed with their prices in Table 3.3. This gives a sense of the international dimension of the business and a hint of its future direction.  Table 3.3. New Product Line-up from around 1907. Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 60-62. Reproduced under fair-use principle. Item Price Notes Crown piano (US)   Automatic crown piano ‘Conbilano’ 2,000 yen  Steinway Piano (upright) 1,000 yen  Bluthner piano   Nishikawa Piano 350-550 yen 5 varieties Yamaha Piano   Various brass instruments for bands: trombone, trumpet, saxophone  Mostly imported, but some domestic Guitar and viola  At that time, there were domestically produced ones Double-bass    Mandolin   Calace (Italian) and some domestic Loud speakers (record player)  Zonophone (Germany), Victor (US), Columbia (US) 127  Victor records  Jūjiya Gakkiten had exclusive selling rights of Victor’s records from 1907 to around 1925. This represented an 80-90% market share of all record imports in Japan and was a very lucrative business for the shop. Taishō koto  Excusive domestic selling rights. Later, Miki Gakkiten gained exclusive selling rights for the Kansai area.  Although not included in Table 3.3 because Jūjiya Gakkiten had already maintained a sales monopoly for the instrument for about a decade, the first foreign company with which Hatsujirō established a strong relationship was the German harmonica manufacturer, Höhner.67 According to the company history, “he negotiated through the US branch office, and finally started dealings with the company’s head office in Germany.” Jūjiya Gakkiten had imported harmonicas since 1897, and the instrument, known colloquially as the Seiyō Yokobue (literally ‘the Western sideways flute’), was in demand a decade later. Its popularity received a boost during and after the Sino- and Russo-Japanese wars, when, renamed the Senshōbue (victory flute), it was enjoyed by Japanese of all ages and used to accompany military and marching songs. Jūjiya Gakkiten’s sales of imported harmonicas remained buoyant despite price competition from emerging domestic manufacturers that took advantage of the fact that the structural simplicity of the instrument meant it was relatively easy to produce. Jūjiya Gakkiten was able to overcome this competition by deploying its ‘hardware-software’ business model, whereby it not only sold the harmonica but also published and sold scores and how-to-play guidebooks (see Figure 3.9).68     67 See Table 3.1. 68 Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 26. Kurata writes: ”As it was suitable for military songs, the harmonica secured its position as an instrument that both young and old were fond of…because the structure of the instrument was simple, soon after it had been imported, many Japanese domestic manufacturers appeared….If it were merely selling imported instruments, Jūjiya would probably have lost the price competition. However, Hatsujirō also strove to publish scores which were sold with the instrument. It can be said that sales of hardware and software together had been a feature of Jūjiya’s business model from its founding.” 128  Figure 3.9. Yokobue Doku Manabi (Self-Learning for the Harmonica) – Song Collection Edited by Hatsujirō Kurata (No Date Given). Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol.26. Public domain.  Hatsujirō also exhibited sound business sense and determination to succeed when it came to importing mandolins, an instrument which had attained a similar level of popularity to the harmonica in the late-Meiji period, particularly among young people.69 Jūjiya Gakkiten’s mandolin business, which began around the time Hatsujirō took over from Shigetarō depended on procurement from manufacturers in Italy. The situation was challenging with the onset of World War I when all imports from, and travel to Europe were prohibited. After the War, however, Hatsujirō took a two-and-a-half-year business trip to the United States and Europe, and visited Germany and Italy. In Italy, he persuaded the acclaimed mandolin player and maker, Rafaelle Calace (1863-1934), of the business opportunities in Japan. When the exclusive sales contract they signed fell through, he was able to find an alternative Venetian maker. On his return to Japan, Hatsujirō was thanked by mandolin aficionados for his success in finding an Italian supplier.70   69 See Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku, 89-90. 70 Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vols. 27-28. Kurata writes: “From Hatsujirō’s day, Jūjiya started to order mandolins. But due to their scarcity and the fact that they were only made in Italy, stable business was not possible. Hatsujirō, who acted immediately after setting his mind on something, would have flown straight to Italy to negotiate directly, but it was the outbreak of World War I and the world was in chaos. From 1914, imports were put on hold for a while…. [After the War, Hatsujirō visited Italy]. In Italy, he made a direct approach to the famous performer and manufacture of the mandolin, Rafaelle Calace….He would have told him about the popularity of mandolin in Japan, and appealed to him regarding the lack of instruments there.”  129  With his achievements in building up relationships with suppliers in Europe and the US, Hatsujirō had set Jūjiya Gakkiten on a solid footing for the future. The company benefitted from a boom in the Japanese economy as a result of World War I. This was buttressed by the deals that Hatsujirō had conducted during his long business trip in the West. He had forged direct sales relationships with a variety of companies, including piano manufacturers in Germany (Bluthner), France, and the United States (Crown Piano). This business success was stalled by Hatsujirō’s premature death in 1921, the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 which destroyed much of the shop, and the death of his father, Shigetarō, later the same year.71   Matsumoto, Tanaka, and Kurata knew that to be successful in the business of Western musical instruments and other related products, it was necessary for them to learn about relevant technologies and business practices in the West, and develop and nurture relationships with established suppliers there. The skills they gained, and the contacts they made in the course of their international activities thus helped to prepare Jūjiya Gakkiten both at its Ginza and in Kyoto stores, and one of its suppliers, Matsumoto Gakki Gōshi Kaisha for the growth in the musical instrument business that accompanied Japan’s increased consumerism. As a result, it constituted an important part of the overall story of the commercialisation of Western music in the country.  From its inception as a Christian bookshop and through its development as a retailer of musical instruments, the development of Jūjiya Gakkiten played a vital contribution to the informal spread of Western music in Meiji-era Japan. Its founders, Hara Taneaki and Toda Kindō, both converts to the Presbyterian Church, embodied the entrepreneurial spirit of the time and place. They came together in the milieu of Ginza and built up a business in a novel and unfamiliar market which had its origins in Western culture. The first director, Kurata Shigetarō deployed innovative strategies and took advantage of changing circumstances and consumer tastes. The shop’s product line-up reflected its hardware-software strategy by which not only instruments but also scores and manuals provided  71 Ibid., Vol. 28. Kurata writes: “During his time in Europe, Hatsujirō initiated business, not only for mandolins, but many other instruments….With the timing of an economic boom in Japan as a result of World War I, Hatsujirō’s activities built a second foundation for Jūjiya. However, his sudden death was the beginning of difficult times for the company.”  130  customers with access to, and knowledge of this new art form. Subsequent generations of the Kurata family, along with a wider network of individuals including Matsumoto Shinkichi, channelled skills and know-how which they had obtained  in the West to develop enterprises which would grow and make Western music more readily available to Japanese people over the following decades.    131    132  Chapter 4 - Creative Adaptations: Two ‘kin’  In 1871, decades before Matsumoto Shinkichi, Tanaka Denshichi and Kurata Hatsujiro ventured overseas to learn Western technology and business methods, Toda Kindō, co-founder and financial-backer of the original bookshop, became the first associate of Jūjiya Gakkiten to study in the United States. Very little is known of Toda’s activities during his year-long sojourn. However, it was probably in the United States that he was inspired to ‘invent’ the shikōkin 紙腔琴 (see Figure 4.1). Kurata Yasunobu describes the device as resembling an orugōru (orgol), a keyboard-less organ which had been popular in Europe in the 1800s. The most significant benefit of the shikōkin was that it enabled people with no prior ability or training to perform and enjoy music. To ‘play’ the shikōkin, one has simply to thread a paper scroll through the device by turning the handle at a constant speed. The holes in the scroll encode the music and the shikōkin can thus be considered another example of Jujiya Gakkiten’s hardware-software model discussed in the previous chapter. The first such mechanical musical instrument to be made in Japan, the shikōkin was marketed on the basis that it could be played by anyone for any purpose or in any situation.1 Figure 4.1. Model Shikōkin on Display at Ginza Jūjiya Co., Ltd., Tokyo. Photo by author and reproduced under fair-use principle.   1 See Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 3. Its ease-of-use and flexibility was promoted in a handbook published by Kurata in 1893. This was entitled Mushi Dokusō Shikōkin (The Shikōkin that can be Performed without Tuition). This is also published under the alternative title, Shikōkin no Shiori (The Shikōkin Handbook) and contains information of how to play the instrument and the type of song scrolls available. Shigetarō Kurata, Shikōkin no Shiori [The Shikōkin Handbook] (Tōkyō: Jūjiya Ongakubu, 1893). 133   The shikōkin boosted Jūjiya Gakkiten’s business at a critical time. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the early 1880s was a period of change for the shop. It had made the transition from the sale of Christian books to instruments. However, its fledgling organ business had not yet started to gain traction. In addition, deflationary macroeconomic circumstances meant that Jūjiya Gakkiten faced a pressing need to generate revenue. Income accrued from healthy sales of the shikōkin after its market release in 1884 provided a solid financial base on which the shop could develop future business. While the shikōkin’s instant popularity was in large part due to its ease-of-use, the shop’s founders, Toda, Hara and Kurata were far-sighted enough to understand that, as well as the income from the sales of the device itself, the buzz generated by this novel item would draw curious customers to the shop and stimulate interest in Western musical instruments more generally. Through the shikōkin, Jūjiya Gakkiten was announcing itself as an innovative company.2 This chapter comprises two case studies. The first and longer one concerns the shikōkin. It traces the rise and fall of the device from its invention, market launch and nationwide promotion, to its demise and eventual replacement by the gramophone player. It shows the important role of the shikōkin in the growth of domestic musicmaking, and also reveals the genres of music that were played on the device as well as the emergence of less-expensive variants. This study posits that the shikōkin and its usage exemplified a form of “creative adaptation” because of the ambiguity surrounding its origins as well as the  2 Ibid., Vol. 2. Kurata writes: “By developing the shikōkin, Toda Kindō left behind a huge asset to Jūjiya. It is no exaggeration to say that the roots of Jūjiya Gakkiten today originate in Toda Kindō’s shikōkin. One can say that the very invention of the shikōkin anticipated Ginza Shōtengai [Ginza Shopping Street] as a high-class (haikara ハイカラ) district.”  134  flexibility in terms of the different situations in which it could be used and the kind of music it could play. The second, contrasting case study presents another example of creative adaptation. It concerns a traditional elite Japanese custom that involved an instrument known as the ichigenkin 一弦琴. To preserve the relevance of the instrument and the traditions surrounding it, Tokuhiro Taimu, a prominent master and teacher, adapted the way it was used, partly influenced by his contact with Western music. Although, unlike the shikōkin, the adaptation of this custom did not directly affect the spread of Western music, the case study illustrates how the adoption of Western music, particularly as it related to pedagogy, fed back and influenced Japanese musical traditions.  In his “cultural theory of modernity,” one of Charles Taylor’s contentions was that, as they modernise, successful societies draw on the resources and traditions already present in their own cultures, giving rise to innovations which he calls “creative adaptations.”3 Commenting on this concept, Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar writes that creative adaptation is not merely a tweaking of modernisation, rather it is “…the site where people ‘make’ themselves modern, as opposed to being made modern by alien and impersonal forces, and where they give themselves an identity and a destiny.”4 The case studies in this chapter represent tangible examples of “creative adaptations” in microcosm, and are the first instances in the academic literature in which musical instruments have been used to illustrate this concept. The first involves a physical artefact, the second a specific practice. The case studies also speak to a broader question regarding the extent to which Japanese copied, or adapted and reinvented aspects of Western culture, and how they modified aspects of their own traditional practices under the influence of the West. Case Study One: The Shikōkin Writing about the growing interest in the history of material culture, Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello explain how certain historical artefacts are valuable when studied in conjunction with archival documents because they prompt historians to ask new questions and explore different perspectives and themes. They are particularly useful in elucidating  3 Charles Taylor, “Two Theories of Modernity,” in Alternative Modernities, ed. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001),183-184, https://search-ebscohost-com.eux.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=81219&site=ehost-live. 4 Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, “On Alternative Modernities,” in Ibid., 18.  135  the everyday lives of ordinary people when written evidence is insufficient. Toys, for example, can shed light on how the concept of childhood has changed throughout history, and can illustrate the shifting relationships between parents and children in a domestic setting. The authors claim that objects are often imbued with meaning, and are not simply tools but enable people to shape their lives.5  The shikōkin was just such an object. It was visually attractive and embodied the glamour of Western material culture. To many Japanese, it was a symbol of modernity and “a shocking machine befitting the age of Bunmei Kaika.”6 In this regard, it was similar to instruments such as the violin which, as Margaret Mehl points out, was considered “an attractive Western gadget” in the Meiji period.7 In addition, its ambiguous provenance gave the shikōkin a certain cachet. While marketed as a quintessentially modern and exotic Western device, its vague and disputed origins meant that it could also be categorised as Japanese and therefore familiar. The shikōkin could be touched, seen, heard, and played solo or in ensemble, and caught the public’s imagination because it could be integrated into everyday life in innovative ways. It soon became a commercial success for Jūjiya Gakkiten and, more importantly, transformed the way that music was distributed, popularised and consumed.  There is no English-language academic literature on the shikōkin. This section builds on, and puts into analytical perspective, the work of two Japanese scholars who have undertaken detailed studies into different aspects of the device. The first is an article by Kaneko Atsuko, which surveys eleven extant shikōkin and classifies specifications, designs, varieties and the content of song scrolls.8 The second is a series of four articles by Matsumura Chikako that traces the story of the instrument’s invention, commercial success and methods of adoption.9 Other sources used in this study are newspaper and magazine  5 Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, Writing Material Culture History. Writing History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), 1-14, http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350105256. 6 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 54. 7 Margaret, Mehl, “Japan’s Early Twentieth-Century Violin Boom,” 23. 8 Atsuko Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi” [The History of the Shikōkin], Ochanomizu Gakuronshū/Ochanomizu Ongaku Kenkyūkai (2006), 253-266.  9 The articles were published annually from 2014 to 2017. Individual citations are provided in the Bibliography. Chikako Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke, Shikōkin” [The Karaoke of the Meiji Period, the Shikōkin], Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Nenpō Kiyō = The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts Annual Report, Bulletin. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Hen (2014-2017).  136  articles and advertisements, the handbook that came with the device, Shikōkin no Shiori (The Shikōkin Handbook), as well as additional primary and secondary accounts. Like the work of Kaneko and Matsumura, this study also draws on Jūjiya Gakkiten’s company history with specific reference to the sections on the origins, development and reception of the shikōkin.10 Invention, Adaptation, or Copy?  An important allure of the shikōkin was its ambiguous provenance. Its origins gave rise to various interpretations and rumours. Simply put, it was either an invention or an adaptation of a pre-existing device. Issues around creativity and imitation form a central theme in discussions about Japan’s modernity. Michael Lucken explores the history and meaning behind the stereotype of Japan’s propensity for mimetics in the field of modern art. He explains that the distinction between individual creativity and imitation - and the elevation of the former over the latter - came out of a particular 19th-century Western Romantic-era view of the world, which placed a premium on inventiveness and genius. This reinforced Orientalist tropes of a creative West, which was viewed as distinct from, and superior to, other peoples in terms of artistic representation. The Japanese were one of those non-Western others, and the stereotype of Japanese as imitators was established and has survived even after the country has caught up with and, in certain areas of technological and cultural innovation, overtaken the West in the 20th and 21st centuries. The specific historical path that the country took to modernity inevitably involved borrowing and learning from the West. However, the priority for the Japanese was paradoxically to develop their own original form of modernity precisely by imitating the West.11 Natsume Sōseki anticipated this path from imitation to originality in his address to students at the elite school, Ikkō: “...it is possible that a time will come when, far from just imitating, we will have our own originality, our own independence. It must be!”12   10 Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu.” Vols. 2-3, and 18. 11 Michael Lucken, Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryusei to Miyazaki Hayao (New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2016), 1-59, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.7312/luck17292. 12 Natsume Sōseki, “Mohō to Dokuritsu” [Imitation and Independence] (speech delivered to the students of Ikkō, the “premier school” attended by the capital’s elite, December 12, 1913), in Natsume Sōseki Zenshū [The Complete Works of Natsume Sōseki], 34 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1956−1957), 33:125, cited in Lucken, Imitation and Creativity, 52. 137  David Wittner identifies the tension between imitation and creativity in the area of technology and industry. He claims that Japanese “cultural materialists” believed that absorbing the material culture, technology and artefacts of the West would enable them to civilise Japan by transforming the external environment. They saw their role as re-inventors of artefacts that fitted the Japanese context and aligned with the country’s own social and cultural values.13 Simon Bytheway illustrates this with recourse to Meiji-era woodblock prints of Yokohama. These artworks portray a Japanese fascination with all aspects of Western material modernity, from transportation and infrastructure to Western attire, and miscellany such as umbrellas, glasses, and haircuts. Bytheway contends that, rather than a slavish obsession with Western technology, the intricately detailed prints reveal an intense curiosity and a desire to apply the West’s technology and material culture to the task of building a prosperous nation. He writes: “Having acquired the ways of the foreigner, the challenge was now for Japanese to fuse these Western things with “Japaneseness” and make them their own—thus taking control, and claiming ownership, of them.”14  Japan’s imitation of Western technology and culture reflected the tension between the country’s conservatism and its desire to modernise and move with the times. Since their early Meiji-era encounters, Western and Japanese observers commented on the Japanese ability to not only copy but also adapt and improve on the original. Resident in Japan in the 1870s, William Gray Dixon neatly encapsulated this sentiment and lauded the Japanese for their love of novelty and ingenuity. The Japanese, he wrote, “…give their own impress to what they borrow.”15 The Japanese wore this image of themselves with pride. In 1902, the newspaper, the Kokumin Shinbun, ran a series of articles entitled “Japanese as they appear to foreigners.” The JWM cited an excerpt from these articles by journalist and historian, Tokutomi Sohō, who wrote: “It is said that…we are skilful imitators, that if patterns are  13 David G. Wittner, Technology and the Culture of Progress in Meiji Japan (London: Routledge, 2007), 99-101. Wittner makes a distinction between the “internalists” (mainly the intellectuals) who believed that to modernise along Western lines, Japan had to internalise the spirit of Western civilisation (“liberalism and the spirit of scientific enquiry”) at a deeper level, and the “externalists” or “cultural materialists,” who wanted to absorb the external trappings of Western civilisation. 14 Simon James J. Bytheway, “The Arrival of the “Modern” West in Yokohama: Images of the Japanese Experience, 1859-1899,” in Life in Treaty Port China and Japan, ed. D. Brunero, D., and S. Villalta Puig (Springer Singapore, 2018), 247-267, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7368-7_10. 15 Dixon, The Land of the Morning, 243. 138  supplied to us we can make anything, and that we adapt things to our circumstances in a clever way….”16  The shikōkin was cleverly adapted to suit Japanese circumstances and tastes. There are no definitive records that reveal its origins. However, it is unlikely that Toda Kindō created it from scratch. The most plausible theory is that he saw and heard a similar instrument, possibly an organette, played by a street musician while he was living in the United States in 1871, and subsequently adapted it to suit Japanese preferences. One piece of circumstantial evidence supporting this hypothesis is that, according to Kaneko, both the shikōkin and the organette were played horizontally, had 14 reeds, and employed scrolls of paper to encode the music.17 It is also conceivable that Toda first saw such an instrument in Japan played by missionaries to accompany hymns. However, this is disputed because they would probably have used organs (or baby organs), rather than organettes for this purpose.18 Yet another explanation is that Toda procured a comparable instrument in Tokyo at a specialist foreign-goods store. Toda then modified it to suit Japanese musical tastes, and obtained a monopoly sales license.19 Conflicting rumours pertaining to the origins of the shikōkin appeared in newspaper reports published before and after its market release in 1884, as well as in later accounts and articles.20 For example, on December 9, 1884, the Hinichi Shinbun stated unequivocally: “The shikōkin, released for sale by the bookshop  Jūjiya in Ginza 3-chome was the invention of Toda Kindō.” The Meiji Jibutsu Kigen (The Source of Meiji Affairs) reflected this opinion: “It is said to be the invention of Toda Kindō after returning from a trip to the West.”21 According to the instrument’s handbook, Shikōkin no Shiori, Toda had referenced a mechanical instrument from the West and manufactured the shikōkin in collaboration with  16 Japan Mail Office, JWM, April 26, 1902, 451.  17 Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 256. 18 Regarding the possibility that the organette inspired, or was a reference for Toda, see Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 256-258; and Kurata, “Sōgyō no Tanmatsu,” Vol. 3. When interviewed, Kurata Yasunobu expressed some misgivings about this interpretation. Kurata, interview.  19 Okano, Tanaka Yūkiden, 53-54. 20 These are cited in Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 254. 21 Kendō Ishii, Meiji Jibutsu Kigen, 3 [The Source of Meiji Affairs, Volume 3] (Tōkyō: Chikuma Shobō, 1997), 285. Also cited in Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 254. 139  the musicologist, physicist, and shakuhachi player, Uehara Rokushirō 上原六四郎 (1848-1913) and the organ maker and Jūjiya Gakkiten affiliate, Nishikawa Torakichi.22  The contrasting view – that the shikōkin was a copy or adaptation of an extant instrument – also appeared in the print media. On June 25, 1884, the newspaper Yūbin Hōchi Shinbun had the following assessment: “This device was the creation of someone who took the invention of an American and adapted it to perform our Japanese musical scores.” Secondary accounts written much later support this assessment. A local history of Ginza entitled Ginza Saikan (A Detailed Guide to Ginza), for example, agrees with the notion that the device was an adaptation: “…it was originally a foreign item [literally, it came on a ship] and was remade in a Japanese style….”23 Writing about Japanese technical innovations in the field of music during the Meiji era, Yoshimura Tamotsu uses the shikōkin as a case study and discusses the instrument’s originality. While conceding that many Japanese so-called ‘inventions’ were actually adaptations of foreign ones, he concludes that the shikōkin was invented by Toda, and dismisses the veracity of an article that had appeared in the Ongaku Zasshi of September 25, 1890, which had claimed that the instrument was an import. Yoshimura speculates that this interpretation was because some of the material and components were imported, or alternatively because the instrument bore a stamp indicating that it was from overseas, as a way of appealing to the Japanese penchant for foreign items.24  The Launch Despite, or perhaps because of, the vagueness surrounding its origins, the shikōkin was launched to much fanfare in June 1884. An article in a local history of Ginza written in 1937 which cites an advertisement in the Tokyo Hinichi Shinbun on December 9, 1884 (see Figure 4.2) described the event as follows: …on June 23rd, 1884, a promotional gathering for the shikōkin was held in Nakamura Rō (Nakamura Tower). Visitors and newspaper journalists listened to the instrument, and there was a large banquet. However, the price of a shikōkin was 15 yen and so, unlike today [1937], a normal  22 Kurata, Shikōkin no Shiori, 61.  23 Kōsei Andō, Ginza Saiken [A Detailed Guide to Ginza] (Tōkyō: Chūō Kōrōnsha, 1977), 244-245. 24 Tamotsu Yoshimura, “Shikōkin to Chosakuken,” Kopiraito 28, no.12 (1988): 5-6.  140  household would not have been able to afford one. Kurata, head of Jūjiya, had exclusive selling rights and he put advertisement in the newspapers, but I do not think they sold very many.25 Figure 4.2. Newspaper Advertisement for the Shikōkin, December 9, 1884. Tokyo Hinichi Shinbun (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun Tokyo Honsha, 1884). Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.  The column on the far left of the advertisement names Jūjiya Gakkiten and Kurata Shigetarō, and provides the shop’s address. On the right-hand side, the text displays the price and mentions that the device came together with four song scrolls, the contents of which are not specified. The main body of the advertisement explains the origins of the shikōkin, how it was operated, and the all-important sales point that it could be performed easily without the need to master any technical skills. It also lists the various genres of music that it could be used to play. Song Scrolls, Shikōkin Models and Variants The shikōkin helped to stimulate the activity of domestic musicmaking throughout Japan. However, its repertoire was by no means limited to Western music and catered to a  25 The content of the advertisement was cited in a local history of Ginza published in 1937. The article pointed out that the shikōkin was the precursor to the gramophone player which, at the time of publication, was one of the latest technological devices that Jūjiya Gakkiten was successfully promoting at its store. See Kōzō Shinoda, Ginza Hyakuwa [Essays on Ginza] (Tōkyō: Okakura Shobō, 1937), 97-98. 141  persistent fondness for Japanese music. The variety of genres of song scrolls that were created for the instrument is another facet of its ambiguous and hybrid quality, and an essential part of its popularity. Ōmori Seitarō writes that despite the efforts of Western musicians in Japan, the level of interest in Western music among the general population by the end of the Meiji period was still low, as Edo culture remained dominant.26 Chiba Yūko acknowledges the stubborn persistence of traditional Edo-period music, mainly for the shamisen, in the popular imagination as late as the 1920s.27 According to Chiba, even as Western music spread, many Japanese clung to traditional music, often mixing the two in interesting and novel ways. An effective method to introduce the unfamiliar sound of Western instruments, she claims, was to play familiar Japanese music on them, and this was a necessary step in the adoption of Western music by ordinary people in Japan.28 This mixing of musical genres was a form of creative adaptation and was vital to the informal spread of Western music. The shikōkin perfectly facilitated this as it enabled genres to be interchanged simply by switching song scrolls, and without the requirements for the mastery or even ownership of different instruments. These song scrolls encompassed a wide range of genres. According to Kaneko, they are thought to have been created by Uehara Rokushirō, who, as mentioned above, collaborated with Toda in the manufacture of the shikōkin itself. Uehara was an accomplished individual. Musicologist, physicist, and shakuhachi player, he also taught acoustics and music history at the TMS for many years.29 The contents of the scrolls, which were priced between 5 sen and 1 yen 50 sen, were advertised in newspapers throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Genres included shōka for the Ministry of Education, nagauta (songs for kabuki theatre), hauta (short love songs), kotouta (koto songs), zokkyoku (traditional popular songs), and some Western hymns. By the time of its publication in 1893, the handbook, Shikōkin no Shiori, contained an index of 173 song titles in an even wider range of categories.30 Extra genres in this list included tokiwazu (music for kabuki dance),  26 Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku, 94-95. 27 Chiba notes that for many Japanese, Western music was primarily associated with military and diplomatic uses, and played at ceremonies. Some also came to revere it as a form of Western artistic culture. Chiba, Doremi, 37-40. 28 Ibid., 98-105 29 Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 260. 30 Kurata, Shikōkin no Shiori, 70-71. 142  kiyomoto (music for jōruri narrative performance), jiuta (folk songs), and shingaku (Qing-era Chinese music). The majority of songs in the index were traditional Japanese or Qing music; Western-style music was limited to shōka, hymns, and other sacred (Christian) music.  In the same way that it sold military instruments and song collections around the time of the Sino-Japanese war as discussed in the previous chapter, Jūjiya Gakkiten was responsive to the public mood in the wake of special events by releasing new song scrolls for the shikōkin. In 1894, a scroll entitled Ginkonshiki no Iwauta (Celebrations Songs for the Silver Wedding Anniversary) was created to celebrate the 25th wedding anniversary of the Meiji Emperor, and an advertisement for it appeared in the Hinichi Shinbun of March 8, 1894 (Figure 4.3). In the same year ‘several tens’ of scrolls under the collective title Yūsō Kappatsu naru Gunka Gungaku (Soul-stirring and Lively Military Songs and Music) were created to arouse patriotic feelings during the Sino-Japanese war. An advertisement for this appeared in Hinichi Shinbun of December 5, 1894 (Figure 4.4). This advertisement read: “[The shikōkin] does the job of raising the spirits of our noble and valiant countrymen, stirring up and encouraging a sense of patriotism, and stimulating confusion in our enemy.”31  Figure 4.3. Newspaper Advertisement for the Shikōkin, March 8, 1894. Tokyo Hinichi Shinbun. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.   31 See Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 260-263. As well as providing a list of genres, Kaneko also includes specific song titles. 143  Figure 4.4. Newspaper Advertisement for the Shikōkin, December 5, 1894. Tokyo Hinichi Shinbun. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.  As indicated earlier, the shikōkin was expensive when it first went on the market and only one model was in existence. Nevertheless, despite an initial unit price that was out of the range of most household budgets, the plethora of advertisements, and the wide range of available genres and titles suggest a healthy demand for the device. Reacting to the shikōkin’s immediate popularity, Jūjiya Gakkiten brought out smaller, less-expensive models. This is significant for two reasons. Firstly, Jūjiya Gakkiten’s efforts to make more affordable models available confirms its aspiration to bring musicmaking to a wider section of the Japanese public. Secondly, by responding to the public’s interest in, and perceiving a latent demand for the shikōkin, Kurata Shigetarō was again demonstrating his entrepreneurial skills and ability to not only react to, but also shape the public’s behaviours and tastes through effective promotion and advertising.  Advertisements for two different versions of the shikōkin appeared in both the Asahi Shinbun of August 1, 1888 and the Hinichi Shinbun of September 3, 1889. The details were as follows: “The original model with four rolls included is 15 yen, a smaller model with four rolls included is 9 yen 75 sen.”32 According to the handbook, Shikōkin no Shiori, by 1893, an additional three models of the shikōkin were available: “Standard make, fixed price 7 yen;  32 Cited in Ibid., 258. 144  Small-sized superior make, fixed price 4 yen; Small-sized standard make, fixed price 3 yen (see Figure 4.5).”  Figure 4.5. The Standard Model (right) and Small-sized Model (left) Shown in Shikōkin no Shiori. Shigetarō Kurata, Shikōkin no Shiori (The Shikōkin Handbook) (Tōkyō: Jūjiya Ongakubu, 1893), 64-65. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.   By the end of 1894, one additional variant came on the market. The Hinichi Shinbun of October 5, 1894 carried an advertisement for another small model for 5 yen. According to Kaneko, the six models varied not only by size, but also other specifications such as whether the instrument had spools on which to wind the music scrolls, and the size of the resonance box.33  Kurata’s business acuity was soon being replicated by others and, after 1893, new imitations of the shikōkin were being marketed under different names, evidence of the enterprising but somewhat anarchic nature of commerce in the Meiji Period. A modified version was manufactured by the piano maker and Jūjiya Gakkiten supplier, Matsumoto Shinkichi. Matsumoto’s instrument was also called the shikōkin, but was spelt using different characters: 紙巧琴 (the middle character 巧 means ‘skilfulness’). The name change  33 Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 258. 145  was a matter of branding to differentiate his product from the original. However, the fact that it was pronounced in exactly the same way may have been a deliberate attempt to hoodwink the public. The two instruments were structurally the same and, like the original, Matsumoto’s shikōkin also came in different sized models. Scrolls of the appropriate size could therefore be used interchangeably on either device.34 The main difference between the two variants was price; for a model of the equivalent type and size, Matsumoto’s variant was slightly cheaper. The varieties proliferated from 1895. Matsumoto’s shikōkin appeared for the first time in an advertisement in the January 1895 edition of Ongaku Zasshi and, according to Kaneko, a subsequent eleven times in the same publication until January 1897. It was also advertised in the Hinichi Shinbun on March 10 and April 10, 1897. Other derivatives that came on the market in 1895 were the Shifūkin 紙風琴 and the Shichōkin 紙調琴, the middle characters meaning ‘wind’ and ‘tone’ or ‘pitch’, respectively. The former was manufactured in Osaka and sold mainly in the Kansai region; the latter was made in Tokyo and was almost identical in appearance and structure to the original shikōkin. One difference between the shichōkin and the other variants was that it used song scrolls that were loops, rather than sheets, of paper. The emergence of shikōkin-like instruments in the 1890s became problematic for Jūjiya Gakkiten and, to protect sales of the original, the shop resorted to publishing warnings to prospective customers in the Ongaku Zasshi between 1894 and 1897. Examples include: “Be careful of inferior imitations,” or “Imitation products which have the same pronunciation but written in different characters continue to emerge. When you order, make sure that it is manufactured by Jūjiya and has the name shikōkin.” A more concise warning ran: “There are fakes. Do not be deceived,” and the bluntest, shown in Figure 4.6, read: “Beware of inferior imitations.”35 Again, this illustrates the deregulated nature of Meiji-era commerce. It also points to a growing interest in a do-it-yourself approach to musical entertainment which was consistent with, and facilitated by Jūjiya Gakkiten’s  34 See Matsumoto, Meiji no Gakki Seizōsha Monogatari, 60-61, cited in Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 259. 35 Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 258-259. 146  strategy of making scores and how-to-play manuals available to educate its customers and empower them to participate in musicmaking. Figure 4.6. Newspaper Advertisement with a Warning, April 7, 1897. Tokyo Hinichi Shinbun. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.  The shikōkin and its derivatives grew in popularity until around the turn of the century. By then the addition of smaller and cheaper versions and variants had expanded the customer base from wealthy elites to a broader section of the public. With a range of models and alternatives to choose from, an increasing number of people thus had access to the device, and it became part of a culture of domestic musicmaking.  Domestic Use of the Shikōkin The shikōkin was ideal for the domestic setting. Easy to use, portable and versatile in the wide selection of genres that it could play, it was able to grace a variety of occasions. It was also an aesthetically attractive item for the home. The range of available designs underscores its appeal as a hybrid object – essentially Western and exotic in function but decorated with a selection of Japanese patterns on the sound box.36 Jūjiya Gakkiten envisaged that many of its customers would play the shikōkin in the home and advertised the instrument on that basis. The inside cover of the handbook, Shikōkin no Shiori, shows a representation of the ideal user for the device.37 The picture (Figure 4.7) is of a domestic  36 Ibid., 255. 37 Kurata, Shikōkin no Shiori, inside cover. The shikōkin was not only played in domestic settings. As it was small, light and inexpensive, and had a similar musical tone to an organ, it made a suitable substitute to accompany shōka at primary school festivals and events. When the cheapest organ cost 18 yen, the shikokin was only 3 yen. See Masahiro Hirano, “Shikōkin,” in Seizō Ganso Yokohama Orugan Piano Monogatari 147  scene: a group, possibly a family, is seated in a room around a shikōkin and a gentleman is playing the instrument to three ladies. All are dressed in traditional Japanese clothes, and o-kashi (sweets) and tea sets are arranged on the floor beside them. Behind the man, another woman, possibly a servant, is entering the room carrying another shikōkin. The inclusion of this may have been to suggest that the instrument was light and portable. Figure 4.7. The Shikōkin in Domestic Musicmaking. Kurata, Shikōkin no Shiori, inside cover. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.  The setting with its traditional garden in the background suggests that Jūjiya Gakkiten targeted the wealthy middle-class as customers for the shikōkin. Jordan Sand points out that a conventional middle-class house in the Meiji era would be detached and have a garden and gate. Together with the employment of a servant, this was an imitation of typical samurai household arrangements from the Tokugawa period.38 On the wall at the  [Manufacturing Pioneers - The Story of Organs and Pianos in Yokohama], ed. Yokohamashi Rekishi Hakubutsukan (Kanagawa-ken Yokohama-shi: Yokohamashi Rekishi Hakubutsukan, and Yokohama Kaikō Shiryōkan, 2004), 17. 38 Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture 1880-1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), 12-13, https://hdl-handle-net.eux.idm.oclc.org/2027/heb05898.0001.001. 148  right is a sign that reads Shikōkin Ensō no En (Shikōkin Performance Garden). It is unlikely that the room would have been dedicated to the enjoyment of one particular instrument, and this is probably a caption to provide clarification to the customer. However, the family depicted is sufficiently wealthy to have a space designated for refined pursuits such as musicmaking.  The wording of newspaper advertisements for the shikōkin also revealed Jūjiya Gakkiten’s intended user and the types of circumstances and occasions to which the device was deemed suitable. Many described domestic settings in which the instrument could be enjoyed by small groups - family, friends or associates. An advertisement promoting the shikōkin in the Hinichi Shinbun for September 3, 1889, for example, suggested that it could be used: “For a dinner and dance party attended by ladies and gentlemen, [and] of course on a day when one prefers a cloudiness, depth and remoteness there has never been a better instrument to play as a hobby for pleasing the heart and ears.” In the same newspaper on January 3, 1890, it was also marketed as “a quality product, indispensable for New Year’s parties and other occasions.”39  The shikōkin was thus touted as suitable for convivial forms of entertainment such as parties while also being seen as conducive to calm meditation. This again reveals a prospective middle-class customer base. According to Sand, the Japanese bourgeoisie regarded the house as an aesthetic project, and a “refuge away from the city.”40 A desire for quiet contemplation is again a Meiji echo of samurai tradition, specifically practices around self-refinement. However, whereas the samurai’s devotion to self-cultivation was predicated on expectations derived from social rank within Tokugawa society, the conditions for participation in such ascetic practices in the late-Meiji period were a high level of modern education and, above all, wealth. In this modern context, the shikōkin exhibited hybridity in that it could be used to encapsulate and express both traditional values and new ways of entertainment within the confines of the home.  A consideration of specific customers who bought the shikōkin further demonstrates the device’s suitability for private and bourgeois domestic use. Matsumura cites stories of  39 Cited in Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 262-263. 40 Sand, House and Home, 13. 149  individuals who bought the shikōkin in the 1890s. One was an anonymous merchant from Chūbu, the central region of Japan. While attending the domestic Exposition in Tokyo in 1890, he visited Jūjiya Gakkiten and purchased an instrument which, he reported, was delivered to his Tokyo abode the same evening. Another was a wealthy businessman named Ōhashi Naoaki 大橋直諒. He received a printed letter from Jūjiya Gakkiten dated October 13, 1890 and a copy of the handbook, Mushi Dokuso Shikōkin. The instrument came with 19 song scrolls, which included hymns, shōka, and nagauta.41 One more account is an excerpt from an autobiography entitled Oya toshite Nogi Shōgun (My Parent, Nogi Shōgun) written by Kikuchi Matasuke 菊池又祐 (1895-unknown).42 Ignoring the warnings of other family members, Matasuke’s uncle, Nogi Katsusuke 乃木勝典 (1879-1904), purchased a shikōkin to celebrate Matasuke’s birth in 1895 and became so enchanted by the instrument that he eventually bought more scrolls and expanded his repertoire. He also reportedly used his enjoyment of the shikōkin as an opportunity to teach himself the koto.43 This final point is significant in that it shows that the shikōkin was not only important as a device for domestic entertainment in its own right, but was also used as a steppingstone to the incorporation of other instruments and to a fuller appreciation of music as a domestic pastime, a topic which will be explored in greater detail in the next chapter.  Nationwide Promotion of the Shikōkin  In addition to gaining customers through astute advertising that targeted the wealthy middle-class, in the 1890s Jūjiya Gakkiten took up a strategy of expanding sales of the device geographically beyond the Kantō Region. According to the handbook, Shikōkin no Shiori, the instrument was sold at 17 agencies throughout Japan from the northern island of Hokkaidō to Kagoshima in Kyūshū (see Figure 4.8).    41 It is likely that Ōhashi selected an additional 15 songs shown in the booklet Katsusokyoku Fuhaiyō Shikōkin [Scrolls of Songs to Perform on the Shikōkin], provided at the time of purchase. The letter is curated at Ōhashi House in Okayama Prefecture, which has since been dedicated as a nationally important cultural asset. See Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2015, 36. 42 The eponymous Nogi Shōgun is an alternative name for the author’s grand-uncle, Nogi Maresuke 乃木希典 (1849-1912), who was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army and played a prominent role in the Russo-Japanese war. He committed ritual suicide with his wife on the day of the Meiji Emperor’s funeral in 1912. 43 Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2015, 37-38. The relevant section of the autobiography cited is Matasuke Kikuchi, Oya toshite no Nogi Shōgun [My Parent, Nogi Shōgun] (Daiichi Shuppansha, 1938), 23-26. 150  Figure 4.8. The 17 Domestic Retailers for the Shikōkin as of 1893. Kurata, Shikōkin no Shiori, 92-93. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.  Matsumura points out that these retailers were agencies rather than branches. They were establishments which normally sold items such as books and watches and, with Jūjiya Gakkiten’s approval, would dedicate a corner of their premises to the shikōkin. Kaneko notes that advertisements in the Hinichi Shinbun of October, 5 1894 and October 16, 1896 made reference to these outlets, and the latter mentioned transportation costs.44 More evidence that the instrument had reached far-flung areas of Japan is in Honpō Yōgaku Hensenshi (A Changing History of Western Music in Our Country), in which music critic, Miura Toshisaburō, recalled coming across the shikōkin in a remote part of the country: “In the small town on the Tōhoku coast where I was born, I have a memory of already playing around with this instrument in 1897.”45 The shikōkin thus played a crucial part in advancing the culture of domestic musicmaking, not only within the metropolitan centres, but to other regions of Japan. Another effective nationwide promotion strategy employed by Jūjiya Gakkiten was to exhibit the shikōkin at the Naikoku Kangyō Hakurankai (Domestic Business Expositions).  44 See Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2015, 38; and Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 259. 45 Toshisaburō Miura, Honpō Yōgaku Hensenshi [A Changing History of Western Music in Our Country] (Tōkyō: Ōzorasha, 1991), 253. 151  These events were organised by the Meiji government to promote national wealth through the development of technical knowledge, trade, and modern industry. They were intended to emulate the success of the World Fairs - industrial, commercial and cultural expositions held in major cities across Europe and the United States in the second half of the 19th century. The domestic expositions offered points of contact with the general public and played an important role in the promotion of Western musical instruments in Japan.46 Participation in these events is another example of Jūjiya Gakkiten’s embrace of modern initiatives to advance its business.  Nineteenth-century expositions were highly competitive affairs. The international events provided opportunities for participating nations to test and showcase their cultural and industrial strengths. Michael Lucken writes that exhibits became models to be emulated on the basis of their originality, and that this stimulated competition between established models and new challengers.47 Lucken was writing specifically about visual arts, but this rivalry also applied to other forms of material culture including commercial and industrial products. The expositions were also sites of experimentation and gave rise to various instances of creative adaptation. Rebecca Corbett notes, for example, that at the 1872 international exposition held in Kyoto, Tea Master, Gengensai Chajin Seichū Sōshitsu 玄々斎 精中宗室 (1810-1877) created a new type of “tea procedure” that incorporated the use of tables and chairs. His objective was to open new markets by appealing, not only to Westerners interested in taking up the tea-ceremony, but also to Japanese who had a penchant for Western objects including furniture.48 David Wittner contends that the international expositions promoted a “techno-civilizational hierarchy,” in which the aim of  46 A detailed treatment of this topic is beyond the scope of this study. However, Chikako Matsumura’s research suggests this as a potentially fruitful area of investigation. She notes that analysing the exhibited instruments and their peripherals such as strings and scores, as well as the award winners, is a way to chart the evolution of Japan’s domestic musical instrument industry, and to follow interactions between networks of companies and individuals such as Nishikawa, Matsumoto, Yamaha, as well as Suzuki Masakichi 鈴木政吉 (1859-1944), the first Japanese manufacturer of the violin and other stringed instruments. See Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2016 and 2017. An article that looks specifically at the violin in these expos is Satsu Inoue, “Meijiki Nihon no Hakurenkai ni okeru Yōgakki - Suzuki Vaiorin no Jirei wo Chūshin ni” [Western Musical instruments at Japan’s Meiji-era Expos - A Case Study Focusing on the Suzuki Violin], Aichi Kenritsu Geijutsudaigaku Kiyō = The Bulletin of Aichi University of the Arts, no. 40 (2010): 111-123.  47 See Lucken, Imitation and Creativity, 39-41.  48 Rebecca Corbett, Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018), 125-126, muse.jhu.edu/book/61281.  152  the displays was to differentiate superiority and inferiority, and that Japan’s own domestic versions were accordingly designed to show the country’s pre-eminence over China and other Asian nations.49  The domestic events grew in scale over the course of the Meiji period and showcased the industry, agriculture, machinery, and art of different regions of Japan. They also had exhibits in the category of entertainment such as musical instruments. The first two domestic expos held in Ueno, Tokyo in 1877 and 1881 featured Japanese and Chinese-style Minshingaku instruments. It was not until the third event, also in Ueno in 1890, that Western instruments such as organs, pianos, violins and the shikōkin were exhibited. At this event, the shikōkin garnered a Hōshō (special commendation) and, as a consequence, the Imperial Household purchased one device, further boosting its notoriety.50 Jūjiya Gakkiten proudly proclaimed this royal endorsement in an advertisement in the Tokyo Hinichi Shinbun of June 14, 1890: “A shikōkin, which Jūjiya of Ginza 3-chome had exhibited at the Third Domestic Business Promotion Exposition, was later bought by the Department of the Imperial Household.”51 The company included this accolade in subsequent advertisements. The March 1884 advertisement shown in Figure 5 above proclaims the royal patronage: “Honoured to be used by the Imperial Court, [and], in particular, the recipient of a prize at the Third Domestic Business Promotion Exposition….”52 The shikōkin won an award at the next exposition in Okazaki Park in Kyoto (1895), which was held in part to celebrate Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese war. Military music was in vogue and, as mentioned above, Jūjiya Gakkiten rode this trend. Alongside nine shikōkin, it exhibited 171 musical scrolls, many of which were gunka (military songs).53   49 Wittner, Technology, 104. 50 Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2016, 36-39. This covers the first five domestic Expos from 1877 to 1903. 51 Kaneko, “Shikōkin no Rekishi,” 258. 52 Ibid., 262. 53 Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2017, 48. Kurata Shigetarō’s decision to open a branch shop in Kyoto came about as a consequence of participation in the 1895 Exposition. According to Okano, “Jūjiya Gakkiten exhibited Western musical instruments, along with 15 companies from different business sectors, at the Tokyo-fu Koma 東京府コマ (Tokyo Booth)….The exhibits from Tokyo had a favourable reception and, on Shigetarō’s instigation, after the expo had finished, the 16 companies that had exhibited there decided not to take their products back to Tokyo, but to continue to sell in Kyoto. They set up a shop on a bustling street in Kyoto on the south-east side of Sanjō Tera-chō, near Kyōgoku, and continued to conduct business. This is currently the location of JEUGIA. Shigetarō resolved to open a musical instrument store at that site in Kyoto and, on top of that, assigned Denshichirō and Yūki to work there after they were married…. Jūjiya Tanaka 153  The Demise of the Shikōkin By the time of the 5th exposition of 1903 held in Osaka, the novelty of the shikōkin was wearing off and the instrument failed to receive an award. Thanks partly to the commercial efforts of Jūjiya Gakkiten, a range of new affordable Western instruments had become available to the public for educational and entertainment purposes. In addition to organs, pianos and violins, exhibits also included violas, cellos, drums, harmonicas, cymbals, trumpets, accordions and flageolets.54 More significantly, however, the next novel musical gadget made an appearance in 1903. To commemorate the exposition, Thomas Edison presented his invention, a gramophone player, to the Meiji Emperor.55 While they co-existed for some time, it was the entry of this functionally equivalent device that ultimately rendered the shikōkin obsolete. Nevertheless, the shikōkin made a temporary comeback at the time of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-1905. As well as again stirring the public with a range of military songs, it had also been played in hospitals to comfort wounded soldiers. According to Matsumura, an article in the Asahi Shinbun of 9 August, 1904 described how decorations, including flowers and plants, and performances on the shikōkin were introduced into wards to raise the morale of injured soldiers. Another piece highlighting the curative effects of the shikōkin appeared in the Asahi Shinbun on February 26, 1907. Shikōkin and gramophone players were placed inside an entertainment room in the Western annex of Shibuya branch hospital. Both instruments were considered a boost to the morale of the injured. However, an advantage of the shikōkin over the bulky gramophone, was that it was light, portable and used paper rather than heavy cylinders or discs.56 Galvanised by its popularity during and after the Russo-Japanese war, the shikōkin once more won an award at the Sixth Domestic Business Promotion Exposition in Tokyo in  Shōten opened for business in 1898. In the [intervening] three years, Shigetarō and Denshichirō had conducted a survey into the potential of the Kyoto market, and decided to go ahead.” See Okano, Tanaka Yukiden, 69-70. 54 Two years earlier, an article in the Asahi Shinbun of 22 June 1901 had suggested that the shikōkin had been overtaken in popularity by the flageolet. See Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2015, 39. Matsumura writes: “This example from the world of musical instruments demonstrates the turbulent changes in fashion in the Meiji Period. And, in 1901, the accordion and shikōkin were behind the times, while the flageolet presaged the arrival of a new era.” 55 Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2017, 48-51. 56 Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2015, 39. Commenting on the article, Matsumura writes: “This shows that the shikōkin and the gramophone player were viewed as important in hospital wards. Compared with the gramophone, the shikōkin was easy to carry. Also, because the songs were [encoded] on paper, they were light and there was no concern about damage, as there was with cylinders and records.” 154  1907. An article in the Asahi Shinbun of June 23, 1907 on the subject of popular musical instruments during the Meiji Period dedicated one quarter of its column inches to the shikōkin. It described how the instrument had been loved since its inception. The author wrote that it was “just like a toy.” By this, he was not belittling or criticising the shikōkin, rather he was using the word as a term of endearment and familiarity. The instrument had many uses and could play popular music across many genres. By comparison, other instruments were expensive and required time to learn. Like a toy, the shikōkin was versatile, inexpensive and easy to play.57 Despite its waning popularity and obvious limitations compared with instruments such as the organ, the shikōkin retained a place in the hearts of the Japanese public throughout the Meiji Period because it was suitable for casual enjoyment in the home and enabled playful engagement with Western and other genres of music.  It is difficult to know how to place the rise and fall of the shikōkin's popularity in a wider context. In cultural terms, the device may be viewed as an ephemeral phenomenon, a passing fad or, at most, an instrument of transition. While it contributed to the general familiarisation of domestic musicmaking in Japan, and even stimulated some users to consider trying other musical instruments, it was largely seen as an object of playful diversion whose musical influence was not deeply internalised. It may be more appropriately considered part of a narrative of technology driving change. The shikōkin’s replacement by the more sophisticated, versatile and appealing gramophone represents a trend towards the increased convenience and automation of entertainment and daily life more broadly, driven by the transition to a consumer-oriented society in the first decades of the 20th century.  Case Study Two: The Ichigenkin The second case study concerns a traditional Japanese custom, and highlights the efforts of Tokuhiro Taimu, a master of the practice, who adapted it in a bid to make it  57 Cited in Ibid., 39. Commenting on the article, Matsumura writes: “The part about the shikōkin was one quarter of the total article. I think this indicates the writer’s love of the shikōkin, and also that it was loved dearly by the Meiji public. Also, by taking the view that the shikōkin was “just like a toy,” the writer did not intend any bad meaning. Rather, it can be interpreted as a term of endearment. [The shikōkin] had lots of applications…and could play many genres of music. Unlike other instruments, which were expensive, difficult to practice and required time to master, it was possible to listen to music easily, without [having to] study. Like a toy, the shikōkin was informal, but one should consider that it was valued as a piece of ‘play equipment’ on which it was possible to perform music impressively.” 155  relevant in a rapidly modernising society. The custom is centred around a musical instrument called the ichigenkin, a one-stringed zither (Figure 4.9) that was traditionally played by samurai and the literati as a form of spiritual cultivation and refinement, complementing other pursuits such as poetry, calligraphy and painting. It was as dissimilar from a toy as can be imagined. Figure 4.9. An Ichigenkin Used for Practice on Display at the School, Seikyōdō Ichigenkin, Tokyo. Photo by author and reproduced under fair-use principle.  This case study represents a different form of creative adaptation. It contrasts with the previous one in a number of ways. Firstly, unlike the shikōkin, which was an inventive piece of technology designed for easy and convenient use, the ichigenkin had a timeless quality and was imbued with a cultural significance that derived from its role in a traditional ascetic practice. The mastery of skills required to play this difficult instrument was closely associated with ideas of personal cultivation.58 In addition, the case studies differ in their modes of discovery. The shikōkin was an invention or adaptation. However, as this case study will show, the impetus to modify ichigenkin practices was revealed to Tokuhiro in a moment of meditative contemplation. Finally, whereas the shikōkin was the harbinger of newfangled devices such as the gramophone player and pointed toward the future and a coming age of modern consumerism, the adaption of the practices around the ichigenkin was an attempt to retain a spirit of the past and bring it into the present. Juxtaposing the two case studies thus illustrates the tensions of the Meiji period. It was a time of transition and confusion, moving forward tentatively with an eye on the past.   58 Janine Sawada argues that in the context of late-Tokugawa and Meiji-era Japan, the term “personal cultivation” (mi o osameru; shūshin) unified a broad range of elements which fall under the categories of "’religion’, ‘morality’, ‘divination’, ‘health’, and ‘education’.” See Janine Anderson Sawada, Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), 3. 156  The ichigenkin belongs to the same family of instruments as the koto. It is played by plucking the string with a plectrum worn on the index finger of the right hand. The pitch of the note is adjusted by moving the position of a plectrum on the left hand along the string, and the notes of the scale most commonly used for the ichigenkin are marked out by small notches on the sounding board.59 According to the homepage of Seikyōdō Ichigenkin, an iemoto (school)60 in Tokyo which teaches the instrument and features in this case study, the ichigenkin is almost invariably used to accompany singing. This is integral to the practice and, when writing new pieces, composers are still expected to include a vocal part. Standard works for the ichigenkin are “…waka [classical Japanese poems], based on the Man’yōshū [8th-century anthology of Japanese poetry] and the Kokin Wakashū [Heian-period collection of poetry].61   The origins of the ichigenkin are uncertain. The Seikyōdō Ichigenkin homepage notes that it possibly originated in the ancient capital of Nara during the Heian Period (794-1185) or, alternatively, it came from China at around the same time. From the Tokugawa Period, the instrument took on religious and philosophical significance and was played by high-ranking priests, the aristocracy, members of the literati as well as samurai, for whom it was associated with the practices of Zen Buddhism. Participation in this custom continued to the Bakumatsu Period, immediately prior to the Meiji Restoration. However, with the disintegration of the samurai class and an increased awareness of Western and other forms of music in the late-Meiji and Taishō periods, interest in, and knowledge about the instrument waned and, by the end of the Pacific War, very few performers remained.62 This  59 For details on the various techniques employed in playing the ichigenkin and the kind of music written for the instrument, see William Richard Rice, “Sustaining Musical Identity of the Ichigenkin: Negotiating Performance, Composition and Aesthetics of Japan’s One-String Zither of the Seikyodo Ichigenkin School” (Masters diss., University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2021), 7-8, https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/sustaining-musical-identity-em-ichigenkin/docview/2592328236/se-2. Rice focuses on Seikyōdō Ichigenkin, particularly the changes that Minegishi Issui has introduced at the school as she continues to represent the tradition of the instrument while not deviating from the philosophy established by its founder, Tokuhiro Taimu. Rice also touches on broader related themes such as how traditional Japanese musical arts have steered the line between tradition and modernity under the continuing influence of Western aesthetic sensibilities. He provides a history of the instrument and Seikyōdō Ichigenkin, and analyses the historical changes in culture, practice, and philosophy surrounding the ichigenkin.  60 The iemoto seido (iemoto system) is based on a hierarchical, family-based organisation through which a traditional cultural practice is passed down from one generation to the next. 61 Issui Minegishi, “Monochord and Song,” accessed December 12, 2022, http://www.ichigenkin.tokyo/song/.  62 For the origins and an overview of the cultural significance of the ichigenkin, see Rice, “Sustaining Musical Identity,” 15-33. See also, Issui Minegishi, “About Us,” “History,” and “Monochord and Song,” accessed December 12, 2022, http://www.ichigenkin.tokyo/about/, http://www.ichigenkin.tokyo/history/, and 157  case study demonstrates how the teaching and practice of the ichigenkin at Seikyōdō Ichigenkin were preserved and revived by the school’s founder, Tokuhiro Taimu by an act of creative adaptation.63 Tokuhiro Taimu and Changes to the Ichigenkin Tradition  Tokuhiro Taimu (Figure 4.10) was a member of the samurai class and a master of the ichigenkin for which he composed song collections. In contrast to the characters encountered so far in this study who were strongly influenced by contact with Western modes of life, Tokuhiro was traditional in his outlook, tastes and attire. According to the youngest of his three daughters, Matsuzaki Issui 松崎一水 (1895-1988),64 who wrote a short account of her father’s life: “…he did not wear a coat, let alone items such as Western-style clothes.” Befitting his status as an ex-samurai, he took part in a wide range of cultural pursuits. He was also an accomplished musician and played various traditional Japanese instruments and genres. Matsuzaki emphasised the fact that Tokuhiro specialised in the ichigenkin, for which “he was the only high-level scholar.”65          http://www.ichigenkin.tokyo/song/. Minegishi writes: “With the growing popularity of Western music etc. in the Meiji and Taishō periods, interest waned and, after the Pacific War, performers of the ichigenkin gradually disappeared.” Also, according to Minegishi: “…it is said that the shishi [the young samurai loyal to the Emperor who were instrumental in bringing about the Meiji Restoration of 1868] would hold secret meetings to discuss the overthrow of the Shōgunate on the pretext of gathering to practice the ichigenkin.” See Issui Minegishi, “Sakamoto Ryōma and Monochord,” accessed December 12, 2022, http://www.ichigenkin.tokyo/sakamoto-ryoma/. 63 Located in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, Seikyōdō Ichigenkin consists of a small performance space. It is used as a classroom, and for small concerts by Minegishi Issui 峯岸一水 (b. 1967), the fourth generation Sōke (grand master or head teacher) and Tokuhiro’s great-great granddaughter. From an early age, Minegishi was taught the basics of the instrument by her great grandmother and, at the age of 21, took over after her death in 1988. 64 Minegishi’s great grandmother and the third Iemoto of Seikyōdō Ichigenkin. Iemoto in this sense is the equivalent of Sōke. 65 Cited in Ōnishi, Ichigenkin: Hitotsuo no Michi, 108-109. 158  Figure 4.10. Portrait of Tokuhiro Taimu on Display at Seikyōdō Ichigenkin, Tokyo. Photo by author and reproduced under fair-use principle.   It was probably because of his musical competency that, according to his great-great granddaughter Minegishi Issui, Tokuhiro was hired by a military band that played Western music. As a result of this experience, he was inspired to reimagine the purpose of, and philosophy behind the ichigenkin.66 In summary, Tokuhiro hoped to democratise the playing of the ichigenkin and deploy it as a pedagogical tool. With echoes of the presence of Western music in missionary schools, Tokuhiro envisaged the musical style of the instrument as something that could be, according to Matsuzaki, “…suitable as domestic  66 Issui Minegishi, interview by author, Tokyo, March 15, 2021. This does not appear in Matsuzaki ‘s account. Minegishi notes that there is no documentary evidence to corroborate this, nor is it clear under what circumstances and at what age he was hired, nor which instruments he played. 159  music for the women and children of Japan…,” and, to this end, he put efforts into “…trying to be a talented professor at girls schools.”67  Tokuhiro’s epiphany coincided with a period of seclusion and quiet contemplation in his life. Matsuzaki noted that, in around 1892, her father quit his official position and “…devoted himself to study and cultural pursuits and, at some point later, isolated himself on Mount Uryū, on the Kitashira River and…lived life as a hermit.”68 Tokuhiro’s withdrawal from society is corroborated by Minegishi, who mentioned that he lived in a cave on Mount Uryū where he wrote a collection of songs and, from around 1897, focused his creative efforts on composing works for the ichigenkin.69 Tokuhiro reflected on his retreat which, in his own words, he had undertaken to “…escape the sordid business of the world.” He outlined his ideas about, and ambitions for a new role for the ichigenkin in the Foreword to the collection of songs which was entitled Seikyōdō Ichigenkinpu (Seikyōdō Ichigenkin Score). In this account, Tokuhiro recalled awakening from a sleep with something on his mind and a renewed enthusiasm for the ichigenkin: “I suddenly became interested in playing the instrument, and I amended another song...I modified the style of the instrument...changed the style of the notation, and also settled on a way to teach it...and this (new method) made it easier for beginners. So I wrote this score.”  While couched in esoteric language, the Foreword to the score reads like a manifesto and a petition to include teaching of the ichigenkin as part of the school curriculum. Tokuhiro claimed that, in the Tokugawa period (“the samurai education period”), modern, “normal” music was played and listened to by the lower classes. Scholars, he wrote, had remained aloof, associating music with low levels of education and morality, and a tendency to create an atmosphere of dissipation. Suggesting an awareness of the transformative presence of Western music, Tokuhiro noted that, due to the recent general  67 Cited in Ōnishi, Ichigenkin, 108-109. The ideal characteristics that Tokuhiro desired in the ichigenkin ranged from “the origin of sounds and melodies of great beauty,” to “easy to transport,” “inexpensive,” and “easy to learn.” See Yoshiko Okazaki, “La Tradition De L’ichigenkin: Une Responsabilité De Femmes” [The Tradition of the Ichigenkin: A Responsibility of Women], trans. Rice, Cahiers de Musiques Traditionalles 18 (2005): 133-151, https://doi.org/10.2307/40240558, cited in Rice, “Sustaining Musical Identity,” 41.  68 Cited in Ōnishi, Ichigenkin, 108-109.  69 Minegishi, interview. Minegishi’s great-great grandfather left behind few written documents. He did, however, leave some annotations and remarks as part of his song collections. Knowledge of the life of Tokuhiro resides in family history and had been passed down orally to Minegishi by her great grandmother, Matsusaki Issui. 160  improvements in education that fostered singing, the stigma attached to music was gradually waning. He described his vision to safeguard the “graceful and moral national music (fūkyō seiga naru kokuon)” of the ichigenkin to which he was devoted. He wrote: “I do not have any other aims. I hope this can be educational music and be introduced in schools widely and popularly so that the children of good families can learn.”70  Setting aside the difference in linguistic tone, Tokuhiro’s statement of his mission to ‘push’ the ichigenkin and make it accessible to broader sections of society has parallels with the promotional language Jujiya Gakkiten deployed for the shikōkin. The first similarity is the emphasis on simplicity and ease-of-use. The byline for the shikōkin, and an attribute which accounted for its popularity, was that it could be ‘played’ without the need for instruction. While a student of the ichigenkin would require tuition and practice to attain a degree of proficiency, something which was indeed integral to its reimagined role, Tokuhiro was clear about his desire to simplify this process and took concrete steps to achieve this. Also, in the same way that Jujiya Gakkiten advertised the shikōkin as a device ideal for usage in the home, Tokuhiro expressed a desire to make playing the ichigenkin suitable as a domestic activity. Of course, it is wrong to draw too many similarities between the two. Jujiya Gakkiten’s fundamental motivation for advancing use of the shikōkin was commercial. Tokuhiro, on the other hand, was driven by a longing to rejuvenate the tradition and, by doing so, contribute to the nation’s moral improvement. Tokuhiro’s direct experience with, and knowledge about Western music undoubtedly influenced his vision for the ichigenkin. He was determined to recast the role for the instrument by blending the tradition with modern utilitarian notions that music could be effective in the education of the young. As discussed in previous chapters, Western music in the Meiji era had been strongly associated with modern styles of learning. Isawa Shūji championed communal singing in the physical and moral development of primary school pupils from the 1870s. For the missionary schools, music lessons were an important part of a cultural package and were incorporated in their curricula. Finally, by selling scores and how-to-play manuals, the founders and directors of Jūjiya Gakkiten promoted the  70 Taimu Tokuhiro, Seikyōdō Ichigenkinpu, Kan no Ichi [Seikyōdō Ichigenkin Score, Volume 1] (Tokyo: Tokuhiro Taimu, 1899), Foreword. No page numbers in original. This is an unpublished and undated source, obtained at Seikyōdō Ichigenkin. 161  edification of their customers as a central part of their commercial enterprise. Although Tokuhiro was not explicit about the specific personal attributes he believed that studying the ichigenkin might foster, the fact that mastery of the instrument had traditionally been a form of personal cultivation made it suitable for reimagining as a pedagogical tool. A secondary change that Tokuhiro introduced to help realise the educational potential of the ichigenkin was to modify the instrument’s notation. Ichigenkin notation consists of a combination of hiragana and katakana phonetic characters and numbers in the form of smaller Chinese characters. These denote the lyrics and the pitch (and therefore the position of the fingers on the string), respectively. The main change that Tokuhiro introduced was to append small black dots to the right of the numbers to indicate the beat. By doing this he was attempting to simplify the pedagogy and facilitate study of the ichigenkin. Citing Minegishi, Rice notes that Tokuhiro added the dots to help his students memorise the pieces, and adds that although the dots indicate the beat and are useful in synchronising vocal and instrument lines, they do not provide a precise rhythm as tempi vary between different performances. Figures 4.11a and 4.11b show ichigenkin scores that were written before and after the inclusion of these beat markers.  Figure 4.11a. Ichigenkin Notation without Dots (1848). Toyohira Manabe (ed.), Suma no Shiori Shohen (Handbook for the Suma, First Edition) (Publisher unknown, 1848). Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.71     71 Sumagoto 須磨琴 was another word for the ichigenkin. For a more detailed explanation of ichigenkin scores, including the significance of the dots, see Rice, “Sustaining Musical Identity,” 80-84. See also Issui Minegishi, “Oneness, All Inclusive: Seikyōdō Ichigenkin: Tradition, Modernity, and Future,” in The Shifting Shapes/Forms/ Styles: Trans-Cultural Studies (Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2009).   162  Figure 4.11b. Ichigenkin Notation with Dots (1899). Tokuhiro Taimu, Seikyōdō Ichigenkinpu, Kan no Ichi (Seikyōdō Ichigenkin Score, Volume 1) (Tokyo: Tokuhiro Taimu, 1899). Obtained from Seikyōdō Ichigenkin, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.  It is difficult to gauge the extent to which Tokuhiro’s exposure to Western music had a bearing on his decision to introduce changes to the notation. Certainly, Western music influenced the performance cultures surrounding other traditional Japanese instruments in the Meiji period. With the introduction of lined notation, for example, the traditions of the shakuhachi, another instrument closely associated with Zen Buddhism, underwent changes “… in symbology and aesthetics, in playing techniques, in instrument construction and repertoire, and social context and pedagogy.” One modification to playing techniques as a result of Western notation, for example, involved the performer privileging pitch over fingering.72 In the 1880s, the performance traditions of the koto and the shamisen were also modified to revitalise and modernise them in response to a shift in audience expectations, partly as a result of increased awareness of Western music. This gave rise to a repertoire retrospectively known as Meiji Shinkyoku (Meiji New Songs). In the case of the koto, for example, the melodic scale was brightened by changing the second degree from a minor to a major interval. Later, both rhythmic and melodic elements from Western military music  72 Riley Kelly Lee, “Ho U vs. Do Re Mi: The Technology of Notation Systems and Implications of Change in the Shakuhachi Tradition of Japan, Asian Music 19, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 72-75, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/fu-ho-u-vs-do-re-mi-technology-notation-systems/docview/740730927/se-2. 163  were introduced to provide “rhythmic regularity” and “metrical organisation,” and to render the melodies easier to sing.73   In comparison to the significant aesthetic changes made for these instruments, however, the mere addition of dots to ichigenkin notation to signal the beat represented a modest concession. Its purpose was not to alter performance in line with Western tastes, rather solely to simplify the pedagogy of the instrument with the broader aim of keeping alive the ichigenkin tradition without losing its cultural essence. This modest change is consistent with the fact that the ichigenkin was an instrument meant for private personal cultivation, not for public performance. While the alterations to the score may not have been a result of the direct influence of Western music, it is nevertheless important to recognise that they were introduced at a time when accommodations to Western music were being made in the broader world of Japanese traditional music. Tokuhiro reimagined the significance and purpose of the ichigenkin and its place within cultural life. A totemic object that had been associated with refined rituals whose practice was confined to an elite segment of society was repurposed as a tool for practical pedagogy for the participation of all. By blending the aesthetic of the ichigenkin with modern prerogatives around utility and education in service of the nation, Tokuhiro was responding to not only the increased influence of Western music, but the challenges of modernity more broadly. He attempted this in a creative way that was consistent with his own background, priorities and temperament. He was motivated by a desire to preserve the instrument and practice that had given meaning to his life in the face of changes brought in by modernity that could possibly destroy it. Minegishi indicated that, as a legacy of Tokuhiro’s reforms, the educational philosophy of Seikyōdō Ichigenkin today emphasises the practical and educational uses of the ichigenkin.74 This chapter has considered two apparently incongruous case studies side-by-side to tease out some deeper similarities and thereby shed light on processes of modernisation and Japanese responses to it. Both cases exemplify different instances of creative adaptation to the influence of Western music in the Meiji period. They centre on tangible  73 Philip Flavin, “Meiji Shinkyoku: The Beginnings of Modern Music for the Koto,” Japan Review, no. 22 (2010): 103–123, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791343. 74 Minegishi, interview. 164  objects around which practices were rejuvenated or established anew. In the case of the ichigenkin, an unequivocally Japanese instrument, these practices were traditionally for the purpose of personal cultivation. Under the indirect influence of increased exposure to Western music, Tokuhiro Taimu subtly modified this custom to bring this objective in line with new styles of education and, by doing so, maintain the relevance of the instrument. The shikōkin, by contrast, was an instrument of ambiguous provenance. It was Western and exotic but was adapted to suit Japanese musical sensibilities. Versatile and easy to play, the device lent itself to a private and playful form of musicmaking and befitted an emerging consumerism in which new Western modes of entertainment and domestic life were evolving. Also, while the influence of Western music loomed large in both these cases, paradoxically, Western music itself hardly featured in their respective repertoires. This was clearly the case with the ichigenkin, whose aesthetic style remained largely untouched by Tokuhiro’s modifications. The shikōkin could be used to play hymns and Western-style shōka, and was thus a means by which Japanese people were introduced to these Western styles. However, the vast majority of songs scrolls produced for the device were for traditional Japanese genres of music. As such, the shikōkin exemplified a tendency of the Japanese to root their acceptance of novelty in existing cultural forms.  Finally, both case studies allude to the growing importance of domestic musicmaking, a topic which the next chapter addresses in detail. The shikōkin and ichigenkin were envisaged as instruments that could contribute to the pursuit of music in the everyday lives of Japanese people. The shikōkin became a fashionable household item for members of the middle-classes and stimulated an interest in domestic musicmaking until its replacement by the functionally equivalent gramophone player. Tokuhiro stated that one of his goals in rethinking the uses of the ichigenkin was to make it suitable for enjoyment in the home. However, the instrument never gained that level of popularity and remained essentially a refined, albeit less exclusive and more accessible, pastime.  165    166  Chapter 5 - Domestic Musicmaking: Bringing it Home  Visual portrayals juxtaposing East and West in the Meiji period often depict everyday scenes. The ukiyo-e woodblock prints of Yokohama street vistas described by Simon Bytheway, for example, reveal a Japanese fascination with aspects of Western material culture including personal accoutrements such as clothes, hairstyles, and umbrellas.1 Pictures of domestic environments sometimes also feature Western musical instruments, illustrating that modern ways of living affected the auditory as well as the visual senses. The triptych folding screen in Figure 5.1 is a print showing five Japanese women in Western attire singing and playing Western music from lined scores while a young boy in a military-style jacket listens. The luxurious fashions and lavish interior suggest that the setting is the home of a wealthy family, possibly that of a member of the ruling elite or a rich businessman. The picture contrasts the busy Western scene in the foreground - the clothes, the furniture, the carpet, the curtains, the flowers, and the organ and violin - with a timeless Japanese backdrop depicting plum-blossom viewing (umemi), an annual Japanese tradition with ancient roots.  Figure 5.1. Baien Shōka Zu (Singing by the Plum Garden), 1887. Yōshū Chikanobu 楊洲周延 (1838-1912), woodblock print, 14 5/8 × 9 7/16” (37.1 × 24 cm), Museum of Fine Arts Boston (www.mfa.org), accessed August 10, 2024, https://collections.mfa.org/download/491195, and reproduced under fair-use principle.    1 Bytheway, “The Arrival of the “Modern” West in Yokohama,” 247-267. 167  This chapter shows that the pursuit and enjoyment of Western music in the home was a vital part of its informal spread with consequences that went beyond the Meiji period. Small and relatively inexpensive instruments such as the harmonica, mandolin, and baby organ, along with scores and how-to-play manuals that were sold at shops such as Jūjiya Gakkiten and Jūjiya Tanaka Shōten from the late 1880s helped to bring music into the daily lives of Japanese, starting with the bourgeoisie and permeating other classes as instruments became more prevalent. As the previous chapter has shown, the shikōkin was part of this process because it was easy to play, could be used for a range of genres, and was appropriate for a variety of occasions. However, other instruments grew in popularity at the same time and were often played domestically in interesting combinations. Their use as a form of home entertainment as well as a means to strengthen family ties was promoted in the print media.  Using articles and advertisements in Japanese publications specialised in the enjoyment of Western music, this chapter demonstrates that the Japanese adopted an experimental and playful attitude to domestic musicmaking. The safe and private surroundings of the home enabled them to dabble creatively with this new cultural facet of Western modernity. An indication of this is that musical instruments, lessons and other elements of Western music were advertised alongside products for enjoyable, non-musical pastimes such as games and sports, placing the development of domestic musicmaking in the context of a burgeoning consumerism in the world of entertainment and leisure. In addition, based on personal accounts of individuals born in the mid- to late-Meiji period who went on to become composers, conductors, teachers and other key figures in the world of Western music, the chapter demonstrates that encounters with Western music in and around the home inspired receptive young people to tap into its artistic potential. Modernity in the Domestic, and the Domestic in Modernity From the 1890s to the end of the Meiji period, Japanese society underwent significant social and macroeconomic changes, including rapid urbanisation and the growth of a professional middle-class. Carol Gluck notes that between 1888 and 1913, although Japan remained largely an agrarian economy, the number of cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants doubled, and the populations of cities like Osaka, Tokyo and Yokohama were 168  swelled by an influx of new residents.2 Alongside this urbanisation was the emergence, particularly towards the end of the Meiji period, of an influential and self-conscious middle-class consisting of intellectuals, experts and professionals in a range of fields.3 Middle-class membership grew across different categories between 1909 and 1914, the largest increments being in the “military and career civil servants (kanri) from 680,000 to 840,000,” and “noncareer lower-level civil servants (yatoi) from 152,000 to 385,000.”4 It was members of this new urban bourgeoisie who purchased instruments and became early participants in domestic musicmaking. The literature on bourgeois family life and the home in late 19th- and early 20th-century Japan intersects broader themes pertaining to the country’s modernisation. Historical studies of the home in Japan have ranged across wide areas such as new conceptions of the family and changing roles for women, the aesthetics of architecture and interior design, and the development of new lifestyles and pastimes deriving partly from the emergence of a nascent global consumer culture. Although an important cultural aspect of these new lifestyles, the adoption of music in the home has been given little consideration by scholars. This study touches on these larger trends, but extends the scholarship by placing the focus squarely on the domestic enjoyment of music as a key facet of mid- to late-Meiji modernity.  Jordan Sand provides the most comprehensive account of how new conceptions of domestic space reflected different aspects of social change in the Meiji and Taishō periods. Describing how bourgeois culture within the imagined space of the home was initially manufactured by government reformers, Sand draws out specific themes: the creation of the profession of housewifery; taste and style in domestic architecture and interiors as a means of personal expression; and the ideal of suburban homeownership. Despite his wide-ranging scope, however, Sand provides only brief mention of the context in which music was  2 Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 33, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780691232676. 3 See David R. Ambaras, “Social Knowledge, Cultural Capital, and the New Middle Class in Japan, 1895-1912,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 24, no. 1 (1998): 1-33, https://doi.org/10.2307/132937.  4 For these statistics, Ambaras is drawing on Ryūken Ōhashi. See Ryūken Ōhashi, Nihon no Kaikyū Kōsei [The Structure of Class in Japan] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979), cited in Michiko Saitō, Hani Motoko: Shōgai to Shisō [Hani Motoko: Life and Thoughts] (Tokyo, Domesu Shuppan, 1988), 47-48. See Ambaras, “Social Knowledge,” 3. 169  adopted in the home.5 Significantly for this study, he notes the key role played by the media in the late Meiji period. Prior to World War I, the creation of bourgeois modernity was  driven by elites whose aim was “manufacturing citizens.” The ideas of leading intellectuals, which were disseminated through opinion-piece articles, advertisements in the popular print media and displays in department stores, promoted an ideal middle-class lifestyle, and appealed to a desire for self-cultivation in the service of which the house became an aesthetic project and means of expressing creativity.6 Specialist music magazines were part of this proliferation of print media, and played an important role in advertising and promoting the domestic enjoyment of Western music.   As this study has shown elsewhere, cultural change in the Meiji period was characterised by an accommodation of the new and foreign within the context of Japanese tradition. The penetration of Western culture into the quotidian lives of Japanese thus inevitably involved hybrids and creative adaptations as it became necessary, as Sand observes, to “fit the Western into native cultural strategies.”7 Selçuk Esenbel contends that Japanese elites adopted Western cultural modes such as fashions, living spaces and etiquette for practical purposes. Within the home, for example, it was common to have wa (Japanese-style) and yō (Western-style) rooms and use these differently depending on the occasion and the type of guests being entertained. However, the Japanese, he contends, were not emotionally constrained by this dualism.8 Illustrating some hybrid forms of musicmaking, this chapter shows that Western music became part of a new domestic lifestyle and was a mode by which the Japanese could express their creativity by experimenting with novel pastimes and ways of living while retaining connections to tradition.   Everyday domestic life provided an ideal space in which the Japanese could play with aspects of Western culture. Writing about the 1920s, when rapid urbanisation and the  5 Sand, House and Home, 29-31. 6 Ibid., 1-19. The conditions for being chūryū (middle-class) were that the head of the house had undergone secondary education and had the income level provided by a white-collar job.  7 Ibid., 15. 8 Selçuk Esenbel, “The Anguish of Civilized Behavior: The Use of Western Cultural Forms in the Everyday Lives of the Meiji Japanese and the Ottoman Turks During the Nineteenth Century,” Japan Review, no. 5 (1994): 163-164, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25790942.  170  effects of American-style industrial and consumer capitalism were raising concerns among Japanese elites that indigenous values, customs and traditions were under threat, Harry Harootunian argues that the frame of the everyday challenged the simplistic representation of modernity as a homogenous process that had its origins in the West and then spread uniformly to the non-West. In the case of Japanese modernity, a “jarring encounter” arose as a result of the stark contrast between modern customs and practices imported from the West, and Japan’s own indigenous values.9 Citing critic Yokoi Tokiyoshi, Harootunian mentions, for example, rapid urbanisation and the associated phenomenon of “city sickness” (toshibyō) as a symptom of the disruption wrought by consumer capitalism on “inherited cultural patterns.”10 Set against this, it was through the quirkiness and idiosyncrasies of “’everyday ordinary life’ (nichijō seikatsu)…where possibility was seen to inhere in routine, habit, and custom,” that the Japanese could grapple with the deleterious homogenising and rationalising effects of modernisation.11  Harootunian’s focus is the Taishō and early-Shōwa periods when the effects of consumerism were far more advanced and integrated into society than during the Meiji period. Vocabulary capturing manifestations of modern consumerism peppered the cultural discourse during the 1920s, notably in the form of neologisms such as moga and modan raifu (abbreviations of “modern girl” and “modern life,” respectively). However, many aspects of modern consumerism had been present in embryonic form from the experimental times of the Meiji Period. Sand acknowledges that, although World War I marked a change in the pace and nature of Japan’s modernity as the country became increasingly caught up in global consumerism, the term “bourgeois culture” can be retroactively applied to “…a single evolving cultural project extending across these two generations.” In other words, it developed from the late-Meiji period.12  Given this continuity, this chapter is justified in extending Harootunian’s argument - that the everyday and domestic space was an important site where the Japanese could  9 Harry D. Harootunian, History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 64-66. Anthony Giddens remarks on the homogenising effects of modernity which disrupts local interactions and “tears space away from place.” See Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 18-19. 10 Harootunian, History’s Disquiet, 68. 11 Ibid., 70. 12 Sand, House and Home, 12. 171  negotiate the turbulence of modernity - backwards to the late-Meiji period. It also adds specificity to his claim by demonstrating how this was achieved through a particular cultural practice: the performance and enjoyment of music. It argues that Western music, or at least the use of Western instruments to play a mixture of musical genres in the home, was a means by which the Japanese middle-class and, as instruments became more accessible, wider circles of society found a creative outlet in the face of massive societal and cultural change. This reading back of Harootunian’s claim to the mid-Meiji period is valid because the commercialisation and consumption of Western music as measured, for example, by the growth of the musical instrument business, can itself be traced back to the mid- to late 1880s when a number of instruments including the shikōkin were already being promoted as suitable for home enjoyment.  Domestic Musicmaking – an Historical Overview As this study has shown, the scholarship pertaining to Western music in Meiji-era Japan has focused predominantly on its introduction through the education system and public institutions such as the TMS. It gives little mention of the commercial and private dimensions, including the role of musicmaking in the home, as a vector for its adoption and spread. Based on the English and Japanese language literature, this section provides a brief historical background to domestic musicmaking and draws out specific themes that are relevant as context for this chapter. These include the prominence given to the piano as a quintessential instrument for the home, and the high degree of participation in domestic music by women. It also provides a comparison with the corresponding situations in Europe and the United States, indicating that domestic musicmaking in Japan was evolving contemporaneously with that in other parts of the world. In Japan, musical activities in or around the home predated the Meiji era. During the Tokugawa period, the enjoyment of music by the aristocracy and samurai was largely confined to the performances of gagaku at the Imperial Court, or music that accompanied nō theatre, while merchants and others lower down the social order would have listened to music for the kabuki, as well as zokugaku, the popular music of the pleasure quarters.13 The previous chapter demonstrated that, in certain cases, the private ‘performance’ of traditional instruments like the ichigenkin was not for entertainment, but rather had cultural  13 Galliano, Yōgaku, 5-16. 172  significance as a form of refined etiquette for the samurai and the literati. However, boundaries to participation were permeable and Peter Nosco points out that by as early as 1690, rich merchants and others with the means to purchase traditional Japanese instruments could also take part in elite musical pursuits at home.14 While still a pastime pursued mainly by wealthy ladies and gentlemen, by the early Meiji period, the function of domestic musicmaking was decoupled from the traditions of the Tokugawa elites, and directed toward entertainment and enjoyment. Previous chapters have shown that during the 1870s, Clara Whitney, Edward Dixon, Edward Sylvester Morse and other foreign residents attended gatherings of Japanese and other Westerners at which an eclectic range of musical genres was performed by and for amateur enthusiasts. These occasions featured traditional popular Japanese instruments such as the shakuhachi and the shamisen, instruments for Minshingaku (Ming-Qing music) like the gekkin, and Western instruments, the most prevalent at the time being the reed organ. The perception of domestic musicmaking as an elite or wealthy middle-class pastime continued throughout the Meiji period. The piano is closely associated with domestic music in Meiji-era Japan. According to Maema and Iwano, by the 1880s, the instrument was in vogue with a small coterie of the elite, among whom there was a “piano boom.”  Clara Whitney was one Western resident who was asked to give piano instruction to the wives and daughters of Meiji politicians and officials as well as returnees from the West. Women were encouraged to study aspects of Western culture including the English language, manners and the piano. The modernising Minister of Education, Mori Arinori 森有礼 (1847-1889), whose wife was one of Whitney’s students, encouraged the wives of other government officials to learn the instrument. Maema and Iwano state that studying the piano fell within the category of hobby, and was seen as an activity akin to learning the koto or practicing flower arranging.15 In other words,  14 Peter Nosco, “The Early Modern Co-Emergence of Individuality and Collective Identity,” in Values, Identity, and Equality in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japan, ed. James E. Ketelaar, Yasunori Kojima, and Peter Nosco (Boston: BRILL, 2015), 121-122, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=4003957. 15 Maema and Iwano, Nihon no Piano Hyakunen, 19-20. The tea-ceremony was another traditional domestic custom repurposed for the greater involvement of middle-class women, both as practitioners and teachers. See Rebecca Corbett, Cultivating Femininity: Women and Tea Culture in Edo and Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018), muse.jhu.edu/book/61281. 173  it was considered a form of manners and self-cultivation, pursued as much to signal social status as for personal enjoyment. Playing and teaching the piano were seen as activities predominantly for women. According to Maema and Iwano, from the middle of the Meiji period to the first decade of the Shōwa period, Japanese piano teachers were predominantly female (the male teachers were foreign), as playing the piano was judged an unmanly pastime.16 In fact, domestic musicmaking in general was a female pursuit. The Kōda sisters, who received accolades from Westerners as performers on the concert stages of Yokohama and Tokyo and were mentioned in Chapter 1, nevertheless strove to keep a low profile as they battled prejudices rooted in the traditional association of music with geisha and the pleasure quarters. Having studied in Europe and the United States, the elder sister, Nobu, was keenly aware of the gender stereotypes around music in the West, where women’s musicmaking was thought best suited to the home. Facing a similar situation in Japan, she became an important advocate of domestic music (katei ongaku) for women.17  Domestic musicmaking by women can be situated within other discourses on the roles of women in the Meiji period, particularly those relating to self-improvement and cultivation in accordance with the government-endorsed aspiration of becoming a ryosai kenbo (good wife, wise mother). Japanese women’s involvement in Western music, however, can be viewed as more than mere conformity with government agendas. As a new area of expertise which required rare and valuable skills, playing and teaching Western music was a domain in which Japanese women were able to excel. The Kōda sisters exemplified this. Other women who gained prowess in aspects of Western knowledge and culture abroad and made a mark on society when they returned to Japan were the young daughters of the samurai sent on the Iwakura Mission in 1871. Perhaps the best known, Tsuda Umeko, became a prominent figure in women’s education. In the field of music, Uryū Shigeko (nee Nagai Shigeko), who had attended Vassal College in New York, was successful  16 Maema, and Iwano, Nihon no Piano Hyakunen, 18-19.  17 Margaret Mehl, “A Man's Job?” 101-120. 174  as a teacher of music at the MIC.18 There, in 1882, she became teacher to the 12-year-old Kōda Nobu. Prominent thinkers such as Mori Arinori and Fukuzawa Yukichi were interested in domesticity and the role of women in the West, particularly the United States. Domestic music in Europe and the United States also tended to be the province of women. During her stay in Germany, Kōda Nobu had observed that many families kept musical instruments in their homes and would gather to play for each other. Her colleague, Kambe Ayako, observed that in France, women would play music for the entertainment of guests and husbands. Like Japan, gender stereotypes around music existed in Europe. In Germany, for example, women were thought suitable only for the piano and plucked instruments such as the guitar, and their musical activities were thus confined to the domestic sphere.19 In the United States too, women who owned a piano were able to participate in a music boom in the second half of the 19th century. According to Sandra Wieland Howe, in the United States the piano “became a standard piece of furniture in middle- and upper-class homes.”20   The barriers against piano ownership in Japan were not only financial. Unlike the US, size and construction of residences mitigated against its becoming a standard piece of furniture. Describing the piano as an “instrument of aspirations,” which was associated with elite culture, Bonnie C. Wade notes that its heavy frame made it wholly unsuitable for tatami-matted Japanese homes.21 Even as late as 1907, a letter entitled ‘The Piano Fad’ in the correspondence section of the JWM joked about the impossibility of owning a piano. The correspondent, Will Pattillo, acknowledged the fad but noted: “The average Japanese dwelling could be torn down and rebuilt for the price of a good piano…. The Japanese will have to do a great deal in the way of reform in house-building and everyday living before  18 Ibid., 110 and 112. See also Sondra Wieland Howe, “The Role of Women” 89-94. A reference that details the lives of these prominent Meiji women is Janice P. Nimura, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back, First edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015). 19 Mehl, “A Man's Job?” 108, 112 and 115. 20 Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht, Sound Diplomacy, 140-141. Writing about female participation in music in the United States, Judith Tick notes that in the 1870s, women were associated with amateur domestic activities that typically involved instruments like the piano, guitar, and the harp. This changed over the course of the following three decades, however, when, despite societal prejudice, women gained acceptance as professional orchestral musicians and composers. See Judith Tick, “Passed Away is the Piano Girl: Changes in American Musical Life, 1870 – 1900,” in Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, ed. Jane Bowers, and Judith Tick (London: Macmillan Press Music Division, 1986), 325-348. 21 Wade, Composing Japanese Musical Modernity, 36. 175  pianos can be adapted to their civilization. They are putting the cart before the horse….”22 Given the exclusivity and impracticality of the piano, this study focuses on less expensive instruments that became accessible earlier and to a wider section of the public. From the 1890s, domestic musicmaking was catching on in Japan, facilitated by the greater availability of smaller affordable Western instruments such as the shikōkin, the baby organ, harmonica, violin, accordion and mandolin. Wholesome domestic pastimes inside and outside the home were being encouraged in the print media and, in 1894, the publishing house, Min'yūsha, published an instructive booklet entitled Katei no Waraku (Harmony in the Home). Chapter 6 of this booklet, Kazoku no Yuraku (Family Amusements), conveyed the message that enjoyment was an important aspect of life and warned people against living for the sake of work. Regarding the enjoyment of music, it read: “…compared with other types of entertainment, music is refined and noble.” However, perhaps as a comment on their restrictive prices, it also warned that “…for people of lowly status, the household should not acquire a piano, violin, koto, kokyū or shakuhachi.”23  Playing Western music gradually established itself in the minds of the Japanese as a suitable domestic pursuit and, twelve years later, an article in the Fukuin Shinpō referred to it when drawing attention to the growing popularity of everyday Western customs and hobbies. These included celebrating Christmas at home, decorating rooms and houses with a Western flavour, dressing in Western attire on a daily basis, and enjoying Western food items such as sweets. Regarding Western music, the author wrote:  According to reports in newspapers these days, increasingly, girls from reputable families practise Western music such as on the piano, organ and violin. The koto, however, is falling out of fashion…internationalism is in vogue and is changing the lives of Japanese people on a daily basis.24    22 Japan Mail Office, JWM, August 3, 1907, 127.  23 Katei no Waraku [Harmony in the Home] (Tōkyō: Min'yūsha, 1894), 95-98. For other examples of instructional booklets aimed at domestic living published in the Meiji period, see Sand, House and Home, 29-31. 24 “Seiyō Shumi no Ryūkō” [A Boom in Western Hobbies], in Fukuin Shinpō, January 11 1906, 8, cited in Japan Mail Office, JWM, February 16, 1906, 149. According to Maema and Iwano, as domestic piano production increased and sales of Japanese-made pianos out-paced imported ones, the instrument gradually became more affordable. Amid a ‘Western Music Boom’, from 1911, sales of both pianos and organs increased rapidly, particularly to the “shiminzō [private citizens].” Up to that point, the main market for the instrument had been schools and theatres. See Maema, and Iwano, Nihon no Piano Hyakunen, 107-108. 176  The previous chapter showed how the shikōkin’s simplicity, portability and versatility made it an ideal device for the middle-classes to enjoy in a domestic setting and how its popularity grew from the 1890s. It could be used for convivial forms of entertainment such as dinner parties, while also being considered conducive to calm meditation. Its ambiguous origins and suitability for both Japanese and Western genres meant that the device could be said to embody the coexistence of the new and traditional in the everyday which, as Harootunian argues, was a way to tame the dehumanising effects of modernity. However, the story of Nogi Katsusuke in the previous chapter illustrates that the shikōkin was not only important in its own right but was also a steppingstone to learning new instruments and gaining a fuller appreciation of music as a domestic pastime.  Hybrid Ensembles In the home, other instruments were often played in hybrid ensembles involving mixes of Japanese and Western instruments and genres. This was another form of creative adaptation and was vital in making Western music digestible to the Japanese public. The shikōkin made it possible to interchange genres simply by switching song scrolls. With other Western and Japanese instruments, this was achieved through eclectic and creative combinations. Chiba Yūko notes that, even as Western music spread, many Japanese clung to traditional music, often blending the two in interesting and novel ways. She contends that the most effective way of introducing the alien sounds of Western instruments was to play familiar Japanese music on them, and that this was a necessary step in the adoption of Western music by ordinary people.25 Mehl describes how wayō chōwa ongaku (Music harmonising Japanese and Western styles) was promoted to strengthen Japanese music while making Western music more palatable. Both Mehl and Chiba note that violinists often performed traditional Japanese music in combination with Japanese instruments such as the koto. Specific examples provided by Chiba include a koto and violin performance at the Rokumeikan on November 27, 1888 of a piece for koto entitled Aki no Nanakusa (Seven Herbs of Autumn), and a public performance on August 26, 1894 of the koto folk classic Yachiyo Jishi (Lion of 8,000 Years) involving the violin, harp, and mandolin.26   25 Chiba, Doremi, 98-105. 26 Mehl, “Japan’s Early Twentieth-Century Violin Boom,” 33-41. 177  Matsumura and Chiba both provide, as a perfect illustration of this form of mixed ensemble in a domestic setting, a picture of a private performance involving a violin and shakuhachi that hangs in the Nagasaki Prefecture Arts Museum (See Figure 5.2). It was painted around 1903 and is called Wayogoso no Zu 和洋合奏之図 (Concert by Japanese and Western Instruments). It depicts two ladies with violins, and two gentleman with shakuhachi. One violinist is playing while the other tunes her instrument, and the same is true of the male musicians. Another lady is listening to the performance intently. The explanation that accompanies the picture in the museum postulates that they were students and a teacher.27 However, like the picture in the handbook for the shikōkin, tea and Japanese sweets are distributed creating a quintessentially domestic ambiance. Figure 5.2. Wayogoso no Zu 和洋合奏之図 (Concert by Japanese and Western Instruments), 1903. Sakaki Teitoku 彭城貞徳 (1858-1939), oil on canvas, 73.2 × 150.4 cm, Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, accessed August 10, 2024, http://www.nagasaki-museum.jp/museumInet/coa/colSubGetByArt.do?command=image&number=297, and reproduced under fair-use principle.  That amateur musicians were playing a variety of Western and traditional Japanese instruments in ensemble underlines again the important influence that Jūjiya Gakkiten had on the informal spread of Western music. As well as the instruments themselves, the shop sold scores and instruction books for instruments such as the shakuhachi and the violin, and some contained suggestions about how to play in ensemble. For example, in 1910, the shop published Vuaiorin Dokushu no Tomo (Violin Self-learning Friend), which included a section  27 See Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2014, 47-48; and Chiba, Doremi, 104. 178  on how to tune and play the violin in ensemble with Japanese instruments. The book also contained Western songs and Japanese songs, including the national anthem, Kimi ga yo, written in stave notation, thus making it easier for violinists to play in tandem with Japanese instruments.28 Figure 5.3a shows the front cover, and 5.3b a page entitled “Koto, Shamisen, Shakuhachi to Gōsō no Ori no Kokoroe” (“Guidelines for the Occasion when Performing with the Koto, Shamisen, and Shakuhachi”) in Vuaiorin Dokushū no Tomo.  Figure 5.3a. Front Cover of Vuaiorin Dokushū no Tomo. Takurō Fukushima, Vuaiorin Dokushū no Tomo (Friend of Violin Self-study) (Tōkyō: Jūjiya Gakkiten, 1910). Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.           28 For a discussion of the picture and the publication, see Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2014, 47-48.  179  Figure 5.3b. “Koto, Shamisen, Shakuhachi to Gōsō no Ori no Kokoroe” (“Guidelines for the Occasion when Performing with the Koto, Shamisen, and Shakuhachi”). Fukushima, Vuaiorin Dokushū no Tomo, 26. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.   Specialist Music Magazines and Domestic Music The commercialisation of Western music and its promotion as a domestic pastime was reflected in articles and advertisements that appeared in specialist music magazines targeted at middle-class music enthusiasts. This development reflected a broader societal trend alluded to earlier. Writing specifically about the impact of print media on the emerging middle-class, David Ambaras notes that “…some 30 journals with the word “katei” (household) in their titles were founded in the 1890s and early 1900s.” Reformers like Motoko Hani 羽仁もと子 (1873-1957) and Sakai Toshihiko 堺利彦 (1871-1933), who established magazines such as Fujin Shinpō (Women’s News), Katei no Tomo (Household Friend), and Fujin no Tomo (Women’s Friend), encouraged middle-class readers to improve their material conditions and strive for ideal family practices and relationships.29 This  29 Ambaras, "Social Knowledge," 25-26. 180  section shows that articles in specialist music publications such as Ongaku Zasshi (Music Magazine) and Ongaku Sekai (Music World) in the same way advocated the benefits of domestic musicmaking as a desirable family activity which was conducive to a harmonious home.30   Ongaku Zasshi was the pioneer in this field and the contents of its inaugural edition on September 25, 1890 show how far the commercialisation of Western music had advanced by the midpoint of the Meiji period. The opening editorial established the mission and purpose of the magazine: to encourage the spread of Western music by promoting specific activities in the areas of education and performance. The inside of the front cover was dedicated to an advertisement for different varieties of pianos, organs and violins, and the shikōkin. The magazine set out to be informative and educational. The first edition had articles related to the TMS as well as on educational and topical subjects. It also contained instructional material in the form of how-to-play manuals and scores, and provided lessons on performance, composition as well as the history of Western music. Another section contained miscellaneous contributions, questions and answers, and news of upcoming performances and music festivals.31 Figure 5.4 shows the front cover (left), and inside front cover containing advertisements for instruments (right) of the first edition of Ongaku Zasshi.           30 Ongaku Zasshi ran from September 1890 to August 1896; Ongaku Sekai ran from January 1908 to November, 1923. Margaret Mehl lists other publications such as Ongaku no Tomo (Friend of Music), Ongaku (Music), Ongaku Shinpo (Music News), and Ongakukai (Music World). See Margaret Mehl, Not by Love Alone, 35. See also Setsuko Mori, “A Historical Survey of Music Periodicals in Japan: 1881—1920.” Fontes Artis Musicae 36, no. 1 (1989): 44-50, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23507314. 31 Ongaku Zasshi [The Music Magazine] (Tokyo: Ongaku Zasshisha, and Kyōeki Shōsha Shoten, 1986), 1st Edition, 1-30. 181  Figure 5.4. Front Cover (left) and Inside Front Cover (right) of the First Edition of Ongaku Zasshi (The Music Magazine), September 1890. Ongaku Zasshi (Tōkyō: Ongaku Zasshisha, and Kyōeki Shōsha Shoten, 1986). Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.  First published in Kyoto in 1907, Ongaku Sekai was the promotional magazine of Jūjiya Tanaka Shōten. It was similar in content to Ongaku Zasshi and carried educational articles including features on canonical works and the lives of the great composers, tutorials on piano and organ technique, and song and piano scores. Its intended readership was existing or potential customers of the shop. In addition to musical instruments, it carried advertisements for services such as instrument repair and peripatetic music lessons. As such, it revealed the presence of an active domestic music scene. Ongaku Sekai also promoted domestic music directly. In the February 1912 edition, two articles appeared that explicitly advocated the enjoyment and educational value of Western music in the home. The commentary below goes into greater depth than other scholars have with this publication. One article was written by Kōda Nobu and is entitled “Ongaku to Katei” (Music and the Home). It confirms her advocacy of domestic music discussed earlier. Drawing on personal experiences, Kōda claimed that the participation in music in the home could strengthen family ties. She started by expressing the regret she felt when she became a housewife and was forced to put aside her musical activities: “…even the pastimes that had seduced me had been taken away for the sake of housework….” 182  Evoking the idea of music as a pleasurable recreation and something beneficial to one’s well-being, she urged people around her who had studied music to continue to practise.  Kōda recognised the potential problems and disappointments that might beset a family in which a musician cohabited with other members who were less enthusiastic:  Connecting music and the home [bringing music into the home], does not work unless there are people to play, and people to listen to that music. If the young wife can play the koto or the piano, the mother-in-law, the samisen, and the husband, the flute, then the house will always be at peace and harmony and this musical gathering will be one factor leading to a beautiful spirit that lasts for a long time. Here, Kōda was clearly endorsing eclectic mixes of musical instruments and genres as an effective way of promoting the enjoyment of music in the home. She took the stance that domestic music should be something for the whole family and recommended practical steps such as holding small musical gatherings on occasions like O-Shogatsu (New Year Holiday) when family and friends would traditionally come together. She related a specific occasion in which she had invited a young woman to her house for practice and later held a mini-concert at which the woman performed the music she had studied during the day to the delight of her parents. Kōda envisaged collective domestic music as something that could strengthen bonds between family members.32  The second article entitled “Katei ni okeru Ongaku Shumi no Fukkyū” (The Spread of the Music as a Hobby in the Home) was written by Tanaka Yūki, the daughter of Kurata Shigetarō and proprietress of Jūjiya Tanaka Shōten. Although the article should be interpreted as a promotional piece, and not necessarily a reflection of what was occurring in Japanese homes, it nevertheless provides an insight on the potential applications of domestic musicmaking as they were conceived of at the time. Like the first article, this piece also targeted women, this time in their role as mothers. Tanaka made specific suggestions about how to stimulate the young through the enjoyment of music. It is significant because it linked domestic musicmaking to other new domestic leisure pursuits. She started by  32 Nobu Kōda, “Ongaku to Katei” [Music and the Home], Ongaku Sekai (Kyoto: Jūjiya Gakkibu, 1912), Vol. 6, no. 2, 7-8. 183  acknowledging that the necessity of music as a domestic hobby was starting to be recognised. She then recommended that parents encourage their young children to develop music as a hobby, rather than playing “tedious games,” and recommended suitable “musical toys” designed to stimulate the infant’s brain to the appropriate degree. These included taikō drums, a reed instrument called the shō no fue, and an earthenware flute called the Hato poppo no fue (‘dove flute’). The exotic, non-Japanese instruments she recommended were the ocarina, the karimba and the harmonica, the last of which, she added, required more skill and was therefore suitable for older children.33 The idea of stimulating children through music can be placed in a broader context of notions about child-rearing in the Meiji era. Brian Platt contends that a distinct, modern concept of childhood came into focus as a result of the introduction of compulsory education from the 1870s, the ultimate aim of which was to educate and develop children for the sake of building a strong nation-state. Ideas about the best way to bring up the younger generation evolved from the 1890s, with increased industrialisation and urbanisation as well as the introduction of reforms based on Western scientific approaches to child-rearing and children’s development. Although these initiatives were aimed at the urban poor, scientific methods were also propagated in the print media to encourage parents of middle-class children to see their offspring as treasures (kodakara), and protect them from the negative aspects and dangers of urban modernity. This could be achieved by, for example, purchasing special toys, designating a room in the house, and cooking nutritional and attractive meals. Again, the role of the print media was crucial here. A number of specialist magazines and guidebooks were published to educate parents in these new methods.34 The article in Ongaku Sekai can therefore be viewed as part of this broader trend.  33 Yūki Tanaka, “Katei ni okeru Ongaku Shumi no Fukkyū” [The Spread of the Music as a Hobby in the Home], Ibid., 5-7. 34 Brian Platt, “Japanese Childhood, Modern Childhood: the Nation-state, the School, and 19th-century Globalization,” Journal of Social History 38, no. 4 (Summer, 2005): 979-980, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh.2005.0073. Regarding new methods of child-rearing aimed at middle-class families, Platt cites Mark Alan Jones, “Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth -Century Japan” (PhD Diss., Columbia University, 2001), https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/children-as-treasures-childhood-middle-class/docview/304690117/se-2. 184  Articles and advertisements in Ongaku Sekai thus packaged domestic musicmaking as an enjoyable pastime that also came with cultural, educational and social benefits. Tanaka Yūki’s piece suggests that playing music in the home could be a key part of a child’s development, and more effective than other games. Associating domestic music with other Western hobbies and activities was a promotional strategy employed by Jūjiya Tanaka Shōten. In the late-Meiji Period, the magazine advertised a variety of pastimes including an assortment of games and sports equipment. Figure 5.5 shows an advertisement that appeared as a two-page spread inside the back cover of the July 1909 edition. It illustrates products that are connected with other types of modern domestic entertainment including board games, ping-pong, chess, croquet, dominoes and diabolo (a kind of yoyo).Figure 5.6 is the back cover of the edition for November of the same year and displays an English-language advertisement for goods and clothing related to sports, exercise and games.  Figure 5.5. Advertisement on the Inside Back Cover of Ongaku Sekai, July, 1909. Ongaku Sekai, Vol. 3, No. 7 (Kyoto: Jūjiya Gakkibu, 1909). Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.     185  Figure 5.6. Advertisement on the Back Cover of Ongaku Sekai, November, 1909. Ongaku Sekai, Vol. 3, No. 11. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.  Since its opening in 1898, the business model of Jūjiya Tanaka Shōten diverged from that of the parent shop, Jūjiya Gakkiten. The Kyoto shop took a relatively expansive approach and promoted aggressive diversification into markets related to non-musical pastimes and hobbies. By comparison, the original shop in Ginza was more conservative and concentrated on its core business of selling instruments, scores and instruction books, and later gramophone players and records.35 Matsumura observes that different products were in demand at specific times. For example, sales of exercise equipment for use in the home or school spiked during the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, whereas home entertainment equipment was in demand during more stable periods.36 The juxtaposition in Ongaku Sekai of advertisements for musical instruments and lessons alongside those for items and equipment used in non-musical forms of modern Western-style entertainment is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it once again  35 Kurata, interview. 36 Matsumura, “Meijiki no Karaoke,” 2014, 48.  186  exemplifies the exploratory nature of the Meiji Period and the entrepreneurial mind-set exemplified by Jūjiya Tanaka Shōten. The shop was catering to the evolving needs of its customers, and generating a curiosity among them to try other novel pastimes that could be pursued at home. It is also indicative of an incipient mass consumer trend for leisure activities and hobbies that began to take off in earnest in the Taishō period. Stimulated partly by the commercial activities of a shop that had its origins as a Christian bookstore in the 1870s, the enjoyment of Western music in the home had become a vital element in the creation of a modern consumer culture based around entertainment and leisure. Above all, as with the mixing of different instruments and genres, the juxtaposition of musicmaking with games and sports demonstrates that, in the privacy of the home, Western music was adopted in a spirit of play and experimentation.  This section has illustrated how Western musical instruments found their way into Japanese homes, particularly from the last two decades of the Meiji Period as they became more affordable. The domestic enjoyment of music in hybrid ensembles that combined Western and Japanese genres reflected a middle-class desire to place the home as the site of artistic creativity and enjoyment. A variety of Western instruments were involved. The shikōkin played a key role in stimulating domestic musicmaking. However, in time, it was supplemented, and eventually replaced, by other instruments like the organ, violin and piano as domestic production made these more affordable. In the Taishō period, it was eventually supplanted by the functionally equivalent gramophone player. Table 5.1 shows a comparison of the various Western instruments available in the Meiji period in terms of their affordability, and suitability for domestic use.  Table 5.1. Popular Western Instruments Used in Domestic Musicmaking. Compiled by author.  Relative price Ease of playing Provenance Flexibility/ multiple genres Shikōkin Inexpensive - price varied by size and specification Easy - No tuition required Ambiguous - Viewed as exotic, and Western, but tailored to Japanese tastes  A wide range of genres  Could be used for entertainment and for quiet relaxation 187  Organ Expensive until domestic mass production  Smaller reed organs were more affordable Difficult Western - associated with Christianity and hymns, but became used in the home Mainly hymns and shōka Piano Very expensive until domestic mass production Unsuited to Japanese homes Difficult Western Western classical and light music Violin Expensive until domestic mass production (c. 1890) Difficult Western Versatile - used to accompany shōka, but also suitable for playing in ensemble with Japanese instruments (wayō chōwa ongaku) Gramophone player Very expensive No tuition required Western invention A wide range of records became available during the Taishō and Shōwa  ̄Periods Harmonica Inexpensive Relatively easy to learn as scores were numerical Western Limited  Used to play military music during victory celebrations.  Enjoyed in university bands in the late Meiji period Mandolin Relatively Inexpensive More difficult than the harmonica Western  Enjoyed in university bands in the late Meiji period 188  Instruments of First Encounter The final section of this chapter demonstrates that the increased availability of Western instruments in and around the home was not only itself an important vector in the diffusion of Western music, but also produced a secondary, knock-on effect that had significant consequences for the longer-term growth of Western music in the early- to mid- 20th century. The section shows that hearing or playing music in a domestic setting was an early encounter with Western music which inspired several individuals born in the mid- to late-Meiji period to become renowned composers, conductors, or music educators later in life. These encounters were not confined to private indoor spaces. The section also demonstrates that hearing Western and hybrid forms of music outdoors in public, specifically music played by military bands and ensembles of street performers known as jinta, was also a defining experience. In the Home Musical encounters in the home foreground the importance of the availability of musical instruments, which again underlines the crucial role played by Jūjiya Gakkiten and other commercial enterprises in the informal spread of Western music. The instruments considered here are the shikōkin, the organ, and the harmonica. However, others in Table 5.1 such as the accordion and the mandolin are also alluded to in the accounts. Each instrument symbolises a particular aspect of Meiji modernity, suggesting the encounters stimulated the individuals in different ways. The shikōkin embodied innovation, both in terms of technology and of modern modes of commerce, in particular advertising and promotion. With increased accessibility and affordability, the organ, which had traditionally been associated with the proselytising and educational activities of Christian missionaries, became attractive as a versatile and expressive instrument for young music enthusiasts. Finally, the harmonica was inexpensive and easy to play, and was popular with many sectors of the public. Not only was it enjoyable, but it also came to symbolise a sense of national spirit of togetherness, particularly in the wake of Japan’s military victories in the foreign wars of the period. The first encounter shows the important role played by the shikōkin, and testifies to the success of Jūjiya Gakkiten’s nationwide sales strategy and effective advertising campaign. Despite his upbringing in remote, rural Akita Prefecture, composer, Komatsu 189  Kōsuke came across the novel device in his youth, sometime in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Komatsu wrote: “At that time something called the shikōkin was being sold, and a friend in a neighbouring village owned one. I believe it was made by Jūjiya and had the description ‘Mushi Dokusō Shikōkin’ (The Shikōkin that can be Performed without Tuition).” This was the very marketing slogan that appeared in newspaper advertisements and handbook for the instrument as discussed in the previous chapter. Confirming the effectiveness of Jūjiya Gakkiten’s advertising slogan, Komatsu noted that with the shikōkin one could listen to a variety of music, Japanese and Western, and that it was certainly something which anyone could ‘play’. Perhaps influenced by the rumours surrounding its originality, he likened it to the pianola, calling it “a pianola that uses reeds,” and speculated that the pianola, invented in the United States in the early 1900s, had been based on the shikōkin. Before coming across the shikōkin, Komatsu had already developed an interest in playing music and reported learning the minteki 明笛 and the gekkin 月琴, instruments for Minshingaku, as well as the accordion. However, it is possible to speculate that his curiosity about the device piqued his interest in Western music.37 Originally associated almost exclusively with Christianity, the organ subsequently featured in early encounters with Western music in homes and local schools. It was considered a sophisticated instrument, and hearing and playing its resonant sounds was, for some individuals, a life-defining moment. Komatsu admitted that his remote village school did not yet possess an organ during his childhood in the 1880s. However, by the middle of the following decade, increased domestic production meant that many primary schools across Japan would have boasted one. As Table 5.2 shows, sales of organs grew rapidly from the mid-1890s.        37 Komatsu, Ongaku no Hana, 3-4. 190   Table 5.2. The Sale of Yamaha Organs by the Osaka-based Musical Instrument Shop, Miki Gakkiten. Keiji Masui, Deta Ongaku Nippon: Furoku Nihon Yōgakushi: Meiji Shoki no Kiroku (Data, Music, Japan: Appendix, the History of Western Music in Japan: Record from the Beginning of the Meiji Period) (Tōkyō: Minon Ongaku Shiryōkan, 1980), Fig. 21, page 23. Accessed at the National Diet Library, Tokyo and reproduced under fair-use principle.38 Year Number of Organs Sold Year Number of Organs Sold 1888 44 1902 744 1889 122 1903 837 1890 131 1904 485 1891 154 1905 953 1892 176 1906 1,503 1893 135 1907 2,292 1894 116 1908 1,962 1895 170 1909 1,715 1896 237 1910 1,635 1897 224 1911 1,638 1898 331 1912 1,629 1899 357 1913 1,715 1900 397 1914 1.098 1901 652 1915 1,288  Composer, Takagi Tōroku, wrote vividly about his early childhood encounters with music which derived from an almost obsessive love of the organ. Although he did not indicate it explicitly, his family likely possessed an organ in their home. Evidence for this is that when they were home for the summer vacations, his musically talented sisters, Shizuko and Kuniko who were students at the Russian Orthodox Nikorai Jogakuin (Nicolai Girls’ School) in Tokyo, played the organ for their brother. He expressed delight in listening to these performances, which “resonated pleasantly.” By watching them play, Takagi was inspired to learn the instrument himself. Describing the process of learning to read music by  38 No equivalent data is available for Jūjiya Gakkiten. 191  following the scores as his sisters played, and then attempting the pieces himself, he wrote: “It was no ordinary effort, but the more I did it, the more it had an enjoyable charm.” He also characterised his sisters’ two-part vocal harmony as “wonderful and moving,” and noted that the melding of their soprano and alto voices had a “mysterious charm.”39 Another individual who was similarly captivated by the organ was the composer, Shimoosa Kannichi. In a chapter of his memoirs entitled Bebī Orugan (Baby Organ), Shimoosa revealed how it was the sound of the portable school organ that first won his heart. He heard the curious instrument, which had “visible wires and pedals,” played skilfully by an expert shōka teacher and admitted feeling visceral sadness when this teacher transferred to another school. His experience of hearing the accompaniment of the teacher had awakened in him a love for the sound of the organ and eventually the opportunity to play the instrument presented itself. One year, when the festival was in town, the school caretaker invited Shimoosa and his grandmother to spend the night at the school in the caretaker’s room.40 The organ, which was out of bounds during regular school hours, had been placed there and “anybody was free to mess around” (Literally, “make a ‘Boo Boo’ noise”) on it. Shimoosa expressed happiness when he tried the instrument with the fingers of one hand, and he “relished the sound of the baby organ reverberating through the empty school.”41 These experiences had a formative influence on the young Shimoosa’s resolve to build his future life around music. Chapter 2 discussed composer, Yamada Kōsaku’s encounter with the hymns he heard as a result of growing up in a Christian household. However, an event he recalled of even more significance involved overhearing music from the house of a neighbour. During his childhood, Yamada’s family relocated several times, settling for a while in the foreign enclave of Tsukiji at Number 6 on the Youngman Estate. Yamada described his enchantment with the music he heard emanating from the luxurious dwelling of a foreign sea-captain at nearby Number 3. He wrote that, one evening, while he was listening intently to the music, a young girl, possibly the occupant’s daughter, appeared. With his limited experience of Western instruments, he naively asked her if what he heard was the sound of an organ. The  39 Takagi, Takagi Tōroku: Ai no Yasokyoku, 24-27. 40 Shimoosa’s father was the School Principal. 41 Kan'ichi Shimofusa, Utagoyomi [A Detailed Account of Songs] (Tōkyō: Ongaku No Tomosha, 1954), 58-62. 192  girl informed him that it was a piano and proceeded to teach him about Western composers. Yamada fell in love with the melancholic sound of the piano, and his rhapsodic description captures his enchantment: The sound coming from that house was not a hymn. It was a beautiful sound like  throwing down a thousand stars in the Milky Way. As a cowardly person, when I heard that sound, even if the sun had gone down, I would leave the house. Leaning on the fence of another house, I would listen in a trance to the music until it stopped.42 This moving encounter was clearly a life changing experience for Yamada, who noted:  A Christian household, hymns and the organ. They connected me to music. And then there was the military music of Yokosuka. That was definitely another strong motivation. However, when all is said and done, that indescribably beautiful performance at No. 3. That was it! That is what made me a composer.”43 A Western musical instrument that, in contrast to the organ and the piano, soon became widely available to the Japanese public because of its versatility, portability and inexpensive price was the harmonica. The instrument was particularly popular with young people, and the composer, Kobune Kojirō wrote that becoming a member of a harmonica ensemble during his primary and middle-school days first piqued his interest in playing music. Kobune described his fond memories as follows: I still talk about it [the harmonica ensemble] when I meet my best childhood friends. It was one of our sources of pride. The reason we were interested in an ensemble was that when we moved from primary to middle school, harmonica groups were extremely popular. Because the harmonica is easy to learn, cheap, and could imitate an orchestra, it captured the musical spirit of young people at that time.  42 Yamada, Harukanari, 13-20. 43 Ibid., 20. 193  Kobune compared the harmonica to the mandolin, another small and portable instrument sold at Jūjiya Gakkiten which, as mentioned in Chapter 3, also attracted a base of aficionados among young people in the late-Meiji and early-Taishō periods. According to Kobune, the harmonica had certain advantages over the mandolin: it was less expensive, and did not require the studying of musical notation as it could be played using a much simpler numerical score. Kobune stated that more important than the enjoyment of making music, however, was the spirit that came with playing together.44 The communal aspect of Western musicmaking during the Meiji period is discussed in the next chapter.  The harmonica had a broad popular appeal. Conductor and arranger, Konoye Hidemarō mentioned it as one of the instruments that spurred his interest in music at a very early age. He recalled a memory from the time when he was about three years old. His father had brought home two harmonicas, one for him and one for his elder sister. They were both delighted and he felt that “a new world had been opened” to them. The following morning, in their excitement, they went up to the second-floor balcony and played for their father as he left for work. Konoye pointed out that his father’s choice of harmonicas was at odds with the more usual pan-pipes or trumpets.45 While these and other instruments such as the violin, the mandolin and the accordion were also popular as portable instruments for use in the home, the harmonica had a special place in the hearts of the Japanese public, young and old. As discussed in Chapter 3, it had been nicknamed the Senshōbue (victory flute) since the Sino-Japanese war, and was used to accompany military songs. Kobune gave it the moniker Shimin no Orugan (the “People’s Organ”). Its association with an optimistic side of Japanese modernity characterised by military victory and a popular national identity meant that the harmonica would have carried positive connotations.  Outside the Home Music critic and friend of Konoye, Tokugawa Yorisada, had a memorable early encounter with Western military music which drew him out of the house. He described in vivid and sensual detail his experiences of watching as the memorial processions of the  44 An excerpt from the composer’s memoirs appears in Yokohama Kōkyō Gakudan, Shimin no Orugan, 10-11. 45 Hidemarō Konoye, “Wakakihi no Konoye Hidemarō” [Konoye Hidemarō’s Young Days], Unpublished Source, 1988, 2. It is the transcript of an interview Hidemarō gave to his son, Hidetake. 194  auxiliary body to the Ministry of the Navy called Kaigun Suikōsha 海軍水交社 passed by his front gate on its way to the Aoyama Ceremony Site: “I could hear the clear and resounding sound of the trumpet and the military music as it approached step-by-step from the inside of Shibayama….The sight of the band leader wearing a hat with white plumage, and a naval uniform decorated with red blossoms remains in my mind’s eye.”46  As well as in the confines of the home and the school, then, Western music could also be encountered outdoors in a public setting. This study considers two types of music heard in this context: the marches and songs played by military bands in procession such as those witnessed by Tokugawa, and the jaunty tunes and rhythms of commercial travelling bands known as jinta. These two types of performance had ostensibly divergent objectives and evoked different spirits, one martial and disciplined, the other commercial and seductive. This reflected the eclecticism of the Meiji period. In the same way that Jūjiya Gakkiten sold instruments and scores for military music as well as collections of military songs and scrolls for the shikōkin, the random juxtaposition of disparate, even conflicting values was a part of the patchwork of Meiji life. What these styles of music had in common, though, was more important: they both utilised Western brass, wind and percussion instruments, and in some cases their repertoires overlapped. They were exciting, energetic, and brash - something that would have appealed to the young individuals who encountered them. Military music features in the historiography of Western music in the Meiji period as the first form of music to be adopted. It played a key role in convincing the government to introduce school songs into primary education and was therefore vital in stimulating the formal adoption of Western music.47 Nomura notes that military songs, shōka and Japanese popular songs influenced each other around the time of the Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895) and that Western-style songs became popular after military songs had been repurposed as school songs. After the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), too, collections of school songs that were based on military songs, such as Yōchien Shōka (Kindergarten Songs), gained  46 Yorisada Tokugawa, Kaiteigakuwa [Pleasant Tales of  Luxurious Garden] (Tōkyō: Shun'yōdō Shoten, 1943), 5. 47 See, for example Eppstein, The Beginnings of Western Music, 19-24; Galliano, Yōgaku, 27-29; Tsukahara, Jūkyūseiki No Nihon, 143-218; Chiba, Doremi, 22-23; Malm, “The Modern Music of Meiji Japan,” 260-265; Nakamura, Yōgaku Dōnyūsha no Kiseki; and Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 452-457. 195  popularity.48 William P. Malm writes that, when looking for inspiration, Japanese composers of shōka were inspired by gunka (military songs).49 However, less attention is paid in the literature to how military music was encountered directly by the public at large and contributed to a familiarisation with Western music and instruments. Rather than considering the influence of the music and songs themselves, this section focuses on the public’s reception of military music and shows that the spectacle of bands on procession kindled an enthusiasm for Western music.    The first public performances of Western music were by French and British military bands in Yokohama as early as 1863.50 After its completion in 1870, Yamate Park later became popular as a venue for outdoor concerts with newspapers reporting twice-weekly performances by military brass bands.51 However, as noted above, it was at the time of Japan’s foreign wars that military music properly came to the public’s attention. During these conflicts, marching music and patriotic songs could be heard in parade grounds and parks as well as on processions through the major cities. Chiba Yūko mentions that adults were introduced to singing during the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars and notes the importance of public concerts in Hibiya Park, Tokyo.52 Ōmori Seitarō indicates that this park, whose construction on the site of Hibiya military training ground was completed in July 1905, included a stage for outdoor music performances.53  As noted previously, Japan’s foreign wars stimulated a passion for military musicmaking among the population at large, boosting Jūjiya Gakkiten’s sales of harmonicas and scores for military songs. Reports in the English-language print media on some of the popular events at the time gave a sense of their scale and reach. In April 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, for example, the “Notes on Current Events” section of the JWM described a large victory procession in Hibiya Park that had been organised by the Koishikawa Arsenal workmen:  “…25,000 men paraded and sang the national anthem, as  48 Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 479-481, 484-485, and 506. 49 Malm, “The Modern Music of Meiji Japan,” 275. 50 Masumoto Yokohama Gēte Za, 9-10. 51 Ibid., 23; and Aya Sakai, “The Hybridization of Ideas on Public Parks: Introduction of Western Thought and Practice into Nineteenth-Century Japan,” Planning Perspectives 26, no. 3 (2011): 355, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/02665433.2011.575555. 52 Chiba, Doremi, 112-114. 53 Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku, 79-80.  196  well as several war-songs in chorus.” The article also mentioned an event in Yokohama organised by newspaper agents at which “…the band played three times the national anthem.”54 On November 25 of the same year, a JWM article entitled “Garden Parties in Tokyo” described a party at which, a “…very interesting feature of the entertainment was the singing of a naval war song by the little children, boys and girls, of the Shirokane Primary School, who were duly marshalled for the purpose…students of the Jishusha entered the park, moving to the music of a stirring march….”55  In his account quoted above, Tokugawa was reflecting on listening to music led by a small military band that would proceed around his home town of Tsukiji playing solemn music to commemorate army or navy personnel lost in battle during the Sino-Japanese War. He was convinced that military music had the biggest influence on the development of Western music in Japan and that it spread more readily than other genres of music: “When the war started, military songs became extremely popular among the masses and the popularity of military music went along with that.”56 He attributed this to the power of military songs to stir emotions and strengthen public spirit during major events such as wars. To illustrate his point about the broad appeal of military music, he named some of the songs that he heard most often as a child, remarking that everyone from his generation would have known them. He picked out two that were written by Nagai Kenshi 永井健子 (1865-1940): The Road is 680 Ri and The Whole of China.57 Military music also had an invigorating effect on Yamada Kōsuke and fed his passion for involvement in the world of Western music. Growing up in the garrison town of Yokosuka, Yamada was exposed to the “clear and resounding sound” of military music. He described going into a dream-world whenever he heard the band marching from town to town. Yamada was a sickly young boy and claimed that the sight of a trumpet, clarinet and the sound of the Becken cymbals strengthened him and made him feel as if he had been “suffused with the blood of a hero.” He also reported following the band around town and often becoming lost, and having to be brought home by one of the soldiers.58 Yamada loved  54 Japan Mail Office, JWM, April 22, 1905, 432.  55 Ibid., November 25, 1905, 576.  56 Tokugawa, Kaiteigakuwa, 5. 57 Ibid., 8 58 Yamada, Harukanari, 13. 197  the military songs that were sung at the time of the Sino-Japanese War and admitted that singing these songs fortified him, and were partly responsible for his decision to become a composer.59  Another form of musical ensemble that could be heard in the streets of the major cities was the jinta ジンタ, also known as the chindon-ya ちんどん屋. Both are onomatopoeic terms which express the jaunty, percussive style of music performed by small groups of costumed musicians who walked around town playing military instruments such as the trumpet and clarinet to the backing of a bass drum and cymbals. Their purpose was commercial - usually to advertise a particular local company or product, or to announce and promote an upcoming local event. Chronicler of Western music in Meiji Japan, Horiuchi Keizō (1897-1983), wrote about the main activities of the jinta.60 He described the performance of such groups as “quite a grand affair,” which involved six to ten musicians who would move around town carrying “a banner with the name of a product or shop, or an advertising slogan, and two or three would distribute leaflets.” Scores of such groups existed all over the country and, “…in addition to mobile advertising, they were also used to attract customers for circuses and panoramas as well as shopping and sports events.”61  Despite the difference in purpose and aesthetic, jinta and military bands had some similarities. Horiuchi reported that jinta flourished “between the Sino- and Russo-Japanese wars, at the exact time Japan’s commerce and industry were booming.” Writing about the jinta bands he heard as a young child, Tokugawa Yorisada recalled that they appeared after the Sino-Japanese War, and that they also played military music and were partly responsible for popularising that genre around Tsukiji. He wrote that they played “Western music for the people…The musicians would parade around the town playing military songs or else shōka in a joyful, sometimes comical, sometimes serious way.” Tokugawa described the music as “a crazy sound that rises up in ones ears,” and the tunes as being “indescribably mawkish and maudlin….” 62   59 Ibid., 17-18, and 20. 60 Horiuchi referred to them as Shichū Ongakutai 市中音楽隊 (Commercial Music Groups), noting that this was often shortened to the colloquial, Gakutai-ya 楽隊屋 (Music Groups). 61 Horiuchi, Ongaku Gojūnenshi, 256. 62 Tokugawa, Kaiteigakuwa, 7. 198  The account of this performance presents an interesting juxtaposition. The jinta band alternated between military music - a category normally associated with thumping, jingoistic strains and expressions of national pride - and bacchanalian, “mawkish and maudlin” melodies. This effortless mixing of categories challenges the linear narrative of a Japanese populace in thrall to a militaristic culture and consigned to an inevitable warpath from the late-Meiji period victories over the Qing Dynasty and the Russian Empire, through incursion on the Asian continent to the horrors of the 1930s. By challenging these assumptions, Tokugawa’s observations humanise the Japanese and evoke an image of a playful engagement with the quixotic “sometimes comical, sometimes serious” music of the jinta. In a single performance, then, one can glimpse an ambiguity at the heart of Japan in the early-20th century; it was an outward-looking, modernising proto-consumer society that was, at the same time, ineluctably sliding towards military conflagration.  Konoye Hidemarō was swept up by the exuberant sound of jinta, which he heard around 1900 and 1901 during his “naughty days” (wanpaku jidai) as he was playing in Hibiya Park.63 Konoye wrote that the gakutai passed by almost every day advertising Kichibe Murai’s cigar shop and drawing large crowds. His fondness for jinta music is captured in a memorable episode that took place one early morning before breakfast. About three or four years old at the time, he and his elder sister conspired to climb over the gate and furtively leave the house to follow the street musicians. Once out, they were soon swept up in the throng and, losing sight of the band, eventually became lost themselves and ended up having to take refuge in a police box.  Takagi Tōroku also wrote about an alluring encounter with jinta music during his youth. He reported that in 1911, a public showing of katsudō shasshin (moving pictures), a precursor to the cinema which had become popular in Japan by the late-Meiji period, came to his home town of Isohara. The performance was advertised beforehand by a travelling ensemble, a small jinta made up of three musicians playing the clarinet, trumpet and percussion (taikō and cymbals). Takagi described the visceral effect that the “harsh sound of the clarinet and trumpet that rang out…” had: “I fell into a hallucination that my entire body was being electrified.” He remarked that the timbre of a familiar melody, the Warship  63 Konoye, “Wakakihi,” 1. 199  March, “…sounded fresh and attractive. What was most moving was that I was hearing a sound that I had never heard before.” Takagi reported a similar exhilarating encounter when the circus came to town, advertised and accompanied by another jinta-type band comprising clarinet, trumpet, taikō, small taikō, and cymbals. He wrote: “My heart was elated and my blood was welling up…” and he recalled being “…about to explode with curiosity.” This time he was captivated by “…the sense of rhythm of the percussion instruments…” which he attempted to replicate at home using two sticks and the “shōji [sliding door] or the dining table,” much to his mother’s chagrin.64  The excitement at being exposed to fresh timbres and rhythms is palpable in these accounts. In addition to the quirky, energetic quality of jinta music, another property that captured the attention of the young individuals may have been its ambiguous and déclassé connotations. Writing on the cultural, social and political position of chindon-ya in contemporary Japan, Marie Abe contends that part of the appeal is its hybrid and marginalised status. It is now viewed as traditional ‘roots music’. However, she points out that the music and surrounding material culture have transnational origins: percussion and kimono style clothing from Japan, and the trumpet and clarinet from Western military bands. Abe claims that, as such, it has never fitted neatly into a binary classification of Japanese or non-Japanese.65   The increased availability of affordable musical instruments as a result of the commercial activities of enterprises such as Jūjiya Gakkiten stimulated an interest in domestic musicmaking among middle-class Japanese. They took up this art form in a spirit of play by, for example, mixing Japanese and Western genres in interesting and creative ways. This trend was part of a growing consumer culture and was promoted in specialist magazines such as Ongaku Sekai, where articles touting the benefits of domestic musicmaking appeared alongside advertisements for other new forms of entertainment. Easier access to Western music had longer term effects too. Some young individuals encountering Western music in the home were stimulated to experiment with Western instruments, and were energised on hearing the rousing and percussive music played by  64 Takagi, Takagi Tōroku: Ai no Yasokyoku, 27-29. 65 Marie Abe, Resonances of Chindon-Ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2018), 20-21.  200  military and jinta bands in their environs. As a result, these individuals went on to pursue careers in Western music.    201    202  Chapter 6 - Western Music and Sociability  As discussed in the previous chapter, the composer Kobune Kōjirō’s love of the harmonica was, for him, an important early encounter with Western music. Kobune and his classmates formed a harmonica ensemble and the communal spirit that came with playing together was the most meaningful part:  Thinking about it, it was not [so much] the harmonica that we liked; it’s that we wanted to have an ensemble. We wanted to try out our own Japanese versions of music such as William Tell and The Poet and The Peasant1 which we heard on imported Victor Records that were popular back then.2  Music societies featuring the harmonica and other domestic instruments were fashionable among young people in the first decade of the 1900s. Ōmori Seitarō describes the Gakusei Ongaku Undō (Student Musical Movement), which sprung up at schools and universities. Examples of associations include the Wagner Society at Keiō University as well as music societies at Waseda and Meiji Universities. Fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, banjo, and mandolin also became popular with students. The latter was particularly in vogue and, by the end of the decade, mandolin orchestras had been established at Dōshisha, Waseda and Keiō Universities.3 An important facet of the informal spread of Western music, this explosion in student-led musical activities at the end of the Meiji period was again facilitated by the availability of instruments sold at retailers like Jūjiya Gakkiten. In addition, these ensembles exemplified new communities that formed around Western music. New forms of community emerge in the seismic shifts brought about by modernity. Charles Taylor writes that a modernising society in which traditional structures break down can produce “new principles of sociability,” rather than complete atomisation. Earlier types  1 Dichter und Bauer by Franz von Suppé (1819-1895). 2 Yokohama Kōkyō Gakudan, Shimin no Orugan, 11.  3 Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku, 89-93. The mandolin’s origins in Japan date from 1894 with Sig. Samuele Adelstein, who started a mandolin performance club for foreigners living in Yokohama. In 1900, Shikama Totsuji 四竈訥治 (1853-1928), the founder of Ongaku Zasshi, learned the mandolin in Berlin and, on his return to Japan in 1901, formed a group for the mandolin, guitar and lute with students from Ueno Art School. 203  of community give way to new ones which are created “…when people are expelled from their old forms, through war, revolution, or rapid economic change, before they can find their way in the new structures, that is, connect some transformed practices to the new principles to form a viable social imaginary.”4 In the “seismic shifts” of the Meiji era, membership of schools, church and missionary organisations, and involvement in commercial groupings, the military, and political movements such as the Freedom and People’s Rights Movement all presented opportunities for new types of sociability, in some cases, forging new bonds and creating communities of people from different backgrounds.  This study has already encountered new types of association with tangential yet important connections to Western music that emerged in the Meiji period. For example, members of the Christian ‘Bands’ located in Yokohama and Tsukiji featured in the chapters on Christianity and entrepreneurship, respectively. It has shown how, in the context of the missionaries, Western music was part of a modernising package which encompassed other aspects of Western culture. Reflecting this, affiliation with such Christian groups was important because it gave the Japanese access to broader networks.5 This is exemplified by Jūjiya Gakkiten founders, Hara Taneaki and Toda Kindō, who took advantage of ties with Western missionaries and reform-minded Japanese converts to become involved in a range of commercial and political activities. As a specific example of this kind of synergy, the early development of Jūjiya Gakkiten benefited from the founders’ connections with missionaries because it provided a ready market for organs and hymnals. The aim of this chapter is to show how Western music gave rise to “new principles of sociability” in the Meiji period by focusing on two contrasting groups of people, both of which had direct links to Western music and made tangible contributions to its informal spread. The first case study concerns musicians in “commercial bands” who performed regularly and for a range of occasions from the late 1880s. These were close-knit ensembles whose members, mainly ex-military band musicians, lived and worked in close proximity to each other and exhibited a strong sense of camaraderie. The second case features a  4 Charles Taylor, “Modern Social Imaginaries,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 99.  5 Garrett Washington writes that the Protestant movement offered the Japanese a community and that, by physically attending churches, converts could gain access to networks that extended beyond the church. See Garrett L. Washington, Church Space and the Capital in Prewar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2022), 203-204, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780824891725. 204  collection of young Western music enthusiasts born in the mid- to late-Meiji era who were inspired by early-life encounters with Western music and went on to become composers, conductors, musicians, and teachers in the 20th century. These individuals had common experiences, knowledge, talents and, above all, aspirations to master Western music. However, unlike the musicians in the commercial bands, they did not form any kind of recognisable community. This was partly for practical reasons: they hailed from different geographical and socio-economic backgrounds. In addition, they tended to be eccentric, singular individuals, content to inhabit their own worlds. However, with the growing institutionalisation of Western music around such bodies as the TMS, particularly in the Taishō period, concrete bonds formed between some of the individuals with significant consequences for the future of the art form in Japan. Typical of the variegated nature of the Meiji period, then, Western music thus mediated new principles of sociability in contrasting ways. Sometimes, it gave rise to identifiable new communities; other times, it led to a fragmented outcome in which it was taken up as a private rather than a communal undertaking.  These two distinct case studies reflect changes that were occurring during the Meiji period, and each accentuates different facets of Japan’s modernity. The activities of the commercial bands illustrate characteristics of the period already discussed in other contexts. These include an openness to entrepreneurship and experimentation, a diversity of intercultural encounters, opportunities for travel and adventure, and specific developments related to the increasing commercialisation of Western music against the background of a growing consumerism. The second grouping of young Western music enthusiasts also depended on modern advances explored in this study, specifically those that facilitated access to Western music in the home. However, its emergence also draws attention to wider societal developments. The group encompassed individuals with common interests and goals that cut across traditional societal and geographical divisions. As such, it exemplified a modern Meiji-era development, but one that had precursors in the Tokugawa period. Also, the behaviour of some of the young enthusiasts reflected the fact that a space for eccentricity and individualism was opening in the late-Meiji period. 205  Case Study One: Commercial Bands The first case study features an ensemble of musicians, mostly Japanese but some Westerners, in commercial bands who plied their trade around Tokyo and Yokohama from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s. This section demonstrates that this community was distinctly modern in its make-up, activities and modes of sociability. Clive Gillinson and Jonathan Vaughan describe an orchestra as a microcosm of society because it consists of “a cross-section of people from all kinds of social backgrounds, working together in close proximity.” They also note that one of the benefits of playing in an orchestra is the sense of camaraderie it engenders.6 For the same reasons, the commercial bands can be considered a microcosm of Meiji modernity. Founders of the bands exhibited a pioneering spirit, resourcefulness, and entrepreneurship in the face of unpredictable circumstances. Their interactions with Western musicians reveal an important form of non-elite encounter, and common challenges and close proximity bred a camaraderie among Japanese musicians that could readily give way to bitter rivalry. Finally, membership of a broader community of musicians created opportunities for adventure in the globalising world of the late-19th century.  An analogous performing community was the all-female singing and dancing troupe, the Takarazuka Revue, which was formed in 1913 at the beginning of the Taishō period. In her survey of the group’s history, Makiko Yamanashi contends that the Revue embodied Japanese modernity in bringing its members and the Japanese public at large into contact with Western culture in the form of popular songs and dances. She remarks that the Revue was a hybrid phenomenon as it brought foreign and Japanese participants together, and also that it offered new lifestyles for women and children at a time when Japan was on the cusp of becoming a consumer-based society.7 Two-and-a-half decades earlier, the commercial bands anticipated the Takarazuka Revue in their novelty, commercial focus, and engagement with cosmopolitan currents.  6 Clive Gillinson and Jonathan Vaughan, “The Life of an Orchestral Musician,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra, ed. Colin Lawson, Cambridge Companions to Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 194. 7 Makiko Yamanashi, A History of the Takarazuka Revue Since 1914: Modernity, Girls’ Culture, Japan Pop (Boston: BRILL, 2012), xxii-xxv, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=1823673. 206  The Emergence of Commercial Bands Since the beginning of the Meiji period, wind and brass ensembles had been entertaining Western and Japanese audiences at a variety of occasions. As discussed in the previous chapter, French and English military bands entertained the public in Yokohama in the 1860s and 1870s, and interest in military music boomed around the time of the Sino- and Russo-Japanese wars as army and navy bands paraded through the streets of the major cities playing songs and marches. However, many of the occasions that featured Western band music were light and sometimes frivolous. JWM articles and reviews from the 1880s are replete with reports of band performances at balls, fetes, Sunday-school bazaars, elite garden parties, soirees, dances, ‘popular concerts’, vaudeville variety shows and operettas, marking a range of public celebrations as well as birthdays, weddings and other private occasions.  The ensembles themselves were also diverse. They included military bands such as the Imperial Household Band, the Imperial Guard’s Band, and groups affiliated with foreign military and merchant vessels that were docked in Yokohama. Commercial bands, consisting mainly of Japanese musicians and given non-specific monikers such as “the Town Band,” “the Yokohama Band,” or “the City Band,” were also regularly called on to perform. Nomura notes that light Western band music was “part of a fad for foreign things, and had about it the air of “modernization”,” and that commercial music groups played an important part in the spread of “Western light music.”8 Emerging from the mid-1880s to meet the growing demand for music to accompany this plethora of public and private events, Shokugyō Ongakudan (Commercial Music Groups) were an important aspect of the informal spread of Western music, and typified the exploratory and entrepreneurial spirit of the Meiji Period. Ōmori Seitarō classifies Shokugyō Yōgaku Ensō (Performances of Commercial Western Music) as part of the minkankei (of the people) tributary of the diffusion of Western music, which had diverged from the main kanzokukei (official) stream initially instigated and driven by governmental bodies.9 Although they were mainly established and manned by retired military musicians, these new ensembles were a voluntary professional and interest-based association, distinct from  8 Nomura, “Occidental Music,” 489.  9 Analogous to the ‘informal’ versus ‘formal’ distinction made in this study. See, Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku, 57. 207  the official ties of the army and navy.10 This section considers the activities of two interrelated commercial bands.  The Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai and the Tōyō Ongakukai  The Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai 東京市中音楽会 (Tokyo Municipal Music Society) was a pioneering commercial band which later splintered into other bands, one of which was the Tōyō Ongakukai 東洋音楽会 (East West Band). The former was established in 1887, incorporated as a kabushiki gaisha (Limited Company), and led by military-band retiree, Kagawa Tsutomu 加川力.11 It had powerful financial backers, including Shibusawa Eichi 渋沢栄一 (1840-1931), entrepreneur and industrialist, and Hiraoka Hirotaka 平岡広高 (1860-1934), the owner of Kagatsuen, a park and racecourse on the banks of the Sumida River.12 A revealing and vivid first-hand account of the Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai is provided by another of the band’s founding members, Ikeda Tatsugorō 池田辰五郎 (1868-1944). In an interview, Ikeda reminisced about life as a band member, and discussed the band’s establishment and musical activities, the musicians he came into contact with, and the personal adventures he encountered.13  Ikeda’s forthright, journalistic style and attention to detail put the reader in the picture and provide a clear sense of the day-to-day vicissitudes of life as a hard-working musician in a tightknit community. The section below is based on Ikeda’s account.   10 Reasons for retiring were largely related to the changing structure and increasing professionalisation of the military. Retirees went into a variety of different occupations. However, some continued to channel their passion for Western music and use their skills in playing Western instruments, and created bands as commercial businesses. See Ibid., 56. 11 Kagawa Tsutomu left no written records of his time as a member of various commercials bands. However, he resurfaced in the historical records in 1902. He had moved to Okayama where he founded and became the first manager of the Okayama Hotel in September of that year. According to local history records, he continued his musical activities. “Having secretly obtained Western musical instruments and young players at Harima in Nakajima, and Takeuchi in Saidaijichōin, he set up a brass band, which became popular at the time…and performed frequently. At the places where Kagawa’s band played, Western music was very rare and was [therefore] extremely well received.” He also obtained funding to set up a club for aficionados of Western music called the “Okayama Drill Club.” This space was also used to teach music and was dubbed a “music Dōjō.” See Chōhei Oka, Okayama Seisuiki [A Record of the Rise and Fall of Okayama] (Okayama: Kenbunkan Yoshida Shoten, 1975), 169-170. 12 For a narrative account of the evolution of the band, see Abe, Burasu Bando no Shakaishi, 32-33, Horiuchi, Ongaku Gojūnenshi, 143-148; and Ōmori, Nihon no Yōgaku, 56-58. 13 This is based on an interview that Ikeda gave to Keizō Horiuchi for the music magazine Ongaku no Tomo in June 1942. See Ikeda Tatsugoro, “Minkan Suisōgaku no Sōken Hisshi” [The Secret History of the Foundation of Civilian’s Woodwind Music], interview by Keizō Horiuchi, Ongaku no Tomo, no. 2 (June, 1942): 34-39.  208  On the evening of November 3, 1886, the six founders of the Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai, all ex-navy band members, gathered at Kagawa’s house and “…conceived a concrete plan for the organisation of the citizens wind band.” Ikeda described the new ensemble as “the first of its kind” and stated that the aim of founding it was to fill a gap in the market caused by “a growing societal demand for woodwind bands” that was not being filled by existing navy ensembles. Ikeda resolved that the Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai would be “a good wind band for the people.” It commenced musical activities the following May. From the beginning, the founding members demonstrated adaptability and resourcefulness in the face of turmoil, particularly of a logistical nature. The band, to which 26 members had been recruited from 100 applicants, had neither an office nor a rehearsal space. Ikeda reported that they rented Yakushi-ji Temple in Atagoyama-no-shita, Shiba-ku as an office, and “the main hall of some temple or other in Shibuya” for a practice room. It also had no instruments, and the leaders were forced to procure them from wherever and whomever they could. One source of heavily discounted instruments was the band of a departing foreign circus called Chiarini. They collected cornets, French horns, B-Basses and trombones, and other instruments from a hotel in Yokohama known as the Chabu Ya (“Chop Inn”), a down-at-heel establishment used by Westerners working as circus performers, sailors, or businessmen on short lay-overs in the port. Later, in May 1887 with an additional 18 members, the Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai found itself short of instruments once more and requested somebody who was planning to visit Shanghai to purchase some there. Finally, for their uniforms, they decided on a gaudy, glittering-gold French look which, although “by far the highest quality at that time,” was costly, forcing the band to put the uniforms together in a piecemeal fashion.  In the face of myriad challenges, the leaders of Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai also exhibited a strong sense of entrepreneurship characteristic of the Meiji period. Facing mounting expenses, the founding members were forced to secure and expand sources of income and investment. The band gave its first performance in the summer of 1887 at the opening ceremony of a manufacturing company in Kōzuke Province.14 Ikeda said that the band’s strategy was “to work hard and give as good a performance as a military band  14 Known then as Jōshū, currently part of Gunma Prefecture. 209  would.” In 1888, the Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai was incorporated as a Kabushiki Gaisha (Limited Company) and was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. With the backing of 25 investors, it had achieved a capitalisation of 10,000 yen which, according to Ikeda, was “a very large amount at the time.” With strong earnings from performances, the pay-out on investment showed a profit of almost threefold within about a year of its incorporation. Ikeda admitted that their financial success was also partly due to low expenses: of the 32 band members, 26 were unpaid “students.”  Ikeda’s account paints a vivid picture of the modernising world of late-19th century Yokohama and Tokyo. The musicians were surrounded by the material trappings of the era: Western musical instruments, foreign circuses, Western-style hotels, and decorative French style uniforms, to name but a few. The Tokyo Stock Exchange, recently established in 1878, was another symbol of the times, as was the allusion to Shanghai which pointed to the growing intraregional links, both commercial and cultural, between the various concession ports in Asia.15 Margaret Mehl notes the importance of cosmopolitan cities like Shanghai and Harbin in the spread of Western music in Japan, particularly in the early-20th century.16 The band members’ dealings with Western musicians were also part of this picture. They add an overlooked layer of nuance to the understanding of cross-cultural encounters in Yokohama, namely the interactions between professionals who were neither elites, nor criminal-class “beach combers.”17 The Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai’s founders were determined to bring in a Westerner, a “foreign teacher,” to lead the band. Their first appointee was a failure. He was an American named R.S. George, a musician in the aforementioned Chiarini circus band whom they had met at the ‘Chop Inn’. According to Ikeda, George “...was a good cornet player, but unfortunately he could not read music, nor could he conduct.” Despite this glaring professional deficiency, the band hired him, possibly because his being a Westerner gave him a certain cachet and lent a sense of authenticity to the band. They took  15 For a regional perspective on Asian treaty ports, see Brunero and Villalta Puig, Life in Treaty Port China and Japan. 16 Margaret Mehl, “European Art Music,” 76-79. 17 A condescending term for “white vagrants, prostitutes, and loiterers in the treaty ports of Asia” that appeared in the New York Times of September 10, 1899, cited in Eric C. Han, “‘Tragedy in China-Town’: Murder, Civilization, and the End of Extraterritoriality in Yokohama,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 39, no. 2 (2013): 249, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24243133. Han uses the case of the triple murder by American, Robert Miller in 1899 to illustrate an insalubrious side of Yokohama society, and explore non-elite encounters and contentious issues around extraterritoriality which held sway in the port from 1859 to 1899. 210  him back to Tokyo, but “…he could not stand living there and quit after about one month.” Their second attempt, however, met with success. In August 1887, they hired an Italian named Lizetti who lived up to his reputation as a “wonderful musician” and soon became the centre of the band, leading it while playing the cornet. Lizetti was also well-connected. Through him, the band secured a lucrative contract to perform four times a month at the Grand Hotel on Kaigan Dōri (Coastal Street), Yokohama.18  The musicians thus straddled two realms: the déclassé world of the circus and the Chop Inn on the one hand; and the elite, water-front world of prestigious venues such as the Grand Hotel, on the other.19 Music mediated this and also facilitated connections and camaraderie between Japanese and foreign musicians who formed a dynamic community of common expertise and interests that cut across cultural and linguistic barriers. In addition, any sense of cultural superiority or inferiority was lost in the practical struggles to keep the show on the road. Ikeda and his peers clearly respected Western musicians, to the extent that they coveted one as a band leader. However, it was the Japanese musicians who had the final say over the decision to hire a foreigner.  A similar level of camaraderie also existed among Japanese band members, but it often tipped over into tension and rivalry. After securing the slot at the Grand Hotel, Kagawa and sixteen of the most accomplished players rented accommodation in Yokohama, while the rest remained at the head-quarters in Tokyo to perform at sporting events, parties, business opening ceremonies, and other occasions in the capital. The band gave performances every day, and the constant routine of working, living and travelling to venues together no doubt inculcated a sense of esprit de corps. By the same token, however, round-the-clock proximity inevitably strained relationships between members, some of whom were headstrong individuals, proud and protective of their talents. Tension  18 For more details about Lizetti’s life, including time spent in both Tokyo and later Kobe, see Fumie Tanioka and Tomoko Sasaki, “Kobe Iryūchi ni okeru Ongaku” (Music in the Foreign Settlement of Kobe), Kobe Daigaku Hattenkagakubu Kenkyū Kiyō, no. 1 (2001): 213-214, https://doi.org/10.24546/81000463. 19 Circuses were a popular form of entertainment with Western residents and, from as early as the 1860s, Yokohama had variety of venues for events such as circuses and magic shows. See Masumoto Yokohama Gēte Za, 9. See Ibid., 16-19 for descriptions of performances including music, magic shows, circuses, acrobatics, and amateur drama in the 1860s. Circuses and other déclassé forms of entertainment played a part in the informal adoption of Western music, something which has received little attention in the academic literature. Margaret Mehl names “Travelling entertainers, including musicians playing for concerts, circuses, and film shows…” See Margaret Mehl, Not by Love Alone, 37.  211  eventually boiled over into what Ikeda euphemistically calls “kanjō no toppatsu” (a clash of feelings).  This ultimately resulted in a schism. In the fallout, Ikeda and others set up a new band, the Tōyō Ongakukai, for which they recruited more ex-navy members, borrowed money for instruments from a Yokohama trading company, and rented a Christian church hall in Azabu, Tokyo as a rehearsal space. The two competing bands attained separate slots at the Grand Hotel. However, a failed attempt to merge them into a composite Tōyō Shichū Ongakukai 東洋市中音楽会 (East and West Citizen’s Band) resulted in Lizetti, Kagawa and fifteen other students leaving for another port city, Kobe, where they formed the Kobe Citizen’s Band to entertain audiences at the Kobe Oriental Hotel. The Tōyō Ongakukai remained in Yokohama and performed five nights a week at the Grand Hotel. Despite ongoing competition between bands, camaraderie and mutual support between musicians of various ensembles was never far beneath the surface. One way in which different ensembles supported each other was by exchanging or recycling scores. Ikeda admitted to receiving “about 30 newly published scores…free of charge” from the Nyūyōku Ongakukai (New York Band), which also played at the Grand Hotel, and sometimes passing these on to the navy band. Constantly receiving new scores, the band was able to replenish its repertoire and quickly improve its technique. At the same time, however, it was financially incentivised to fall back on lucrative standards. According to Ikeda:  We played marches by Sousa or Pryor.20 We played songs from dances or plays. The audiences enjoyed songs from the comic opera, Geisha. And Hiawatha went down very well. No march was as well received as that! We had encore after encore. In order for us to play an encore, the audience had to give us about 10 yen. One night we received 300 yen for encores. The encore fees are mostly for Hiawatha. But we played new songs all the time, so our technique improved so quickly. Regular contact with a wide community of Japanese and Western musicians with common experiences and shared goals provided surprising opportunities for adventure.  20 US musicians and composers, John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) and Arthur Willard Pryor (1869-1942). 212  After another disagreement among Tōyō Ongakukai members, this time over money, Ikeda received an offer from General William Worth Belknap (1829-1890), a guest at the Grand Hotel: “He [Belknap] told me that the army band of the flagship USS Omaha comprised only brass instruments and that he wanted to include woodwind too, so he asked me to join.” However, Ikeda faced some resistance at first:  …the band leader, a German called Bayer, appeared not to trust my technical ability, so I was told to go to the ship the next day to meet the band leader for an audition. I was told “play this,” and was given the William Tell Overture and then the clarinet part for a polka which I had never seen before. After I had played both, the band leader seemed completely relieved and immediately hired me as a first rank military musician. As a result, Ikeda became the first Japanese musician to play on a US army ship. This opportunity was extended to other Japanese musicians who, by this stage, had become recognised as proficient performers. Upon request, Ikeda drafted more Japanese including clarinettist and fellow founder of the Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai, Inoue Kyōjirō to replace the “less skilful American musicians.” However, in 1891, when the Omaha was set to return to the US, all but Ikeda disembarked, leaving him the only Japanese musician remaining on board. Of his adventure, he wrote:  Together with the Commander in Chief, I moved from the USS Omaha to the USS Charleston and arrived at Mail Island Army Base. After a week, I was permitted to leave the post, and I went to the port, where I studied for two and a half years. In 1894, while I was there, there was the Sino-Japanese war, and I received my call-up and went back to Japan. Unfortunately, Ikeda did not elaborate on how he spent his time on the ship and at the base, nor did he provide any indication of what he studied. With the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, he was recalled to Japan in August 1894, commanded to take up the position of music instructor, and dispatched with a party of musicians to Hiroshima.  213  The presence of an adventurous Japanese musician like Ikeda on an ocean-going vessel shows that global travel and adventure was something that was not only available to the elites. The proto-globalisation of the late-19th and early-20th-century ‘Belle Époque’ was symbolised by advances in transportation, including transoceanic commercial and military vessels. Selçuk Esenbel notes that travel on such ships was available to cosmopolitan Japanese such as the international businessman Yamada Torajirō 山田寅次郎 (1866-1957), who “…benefited from the new technological web of transportation that greatly reduced the travel time around the globe.”21 Ikeda was no member of this elite. However, as part of a dynamic musical community, he had access to a global network of professional musicians which opened up opportunities for him to participate in late-19th-century global modernity. His role as a member of the band aboard a US flagship exemplifies Frederik L. Schodt’s claim that entertainers were in the “vanguard of globalisation.”22  Case Study Two: Young Music Enthusiasts The second case study features a group of individuals born in the mid- to late Meiji period who encountered Western music at an early age in and around the home and, as a result, were inspired to become composers, conductors, musicians, and teachers. In this case, involvement with Western music facilitated an entirely different kind of sociability. Unlike the commercial band musicians, these individuals did not form a cohesive community. Although united by common interests, talents and ambitions, they were divided by geography and socio-economic background, which precluded regular and direct contact. This isolation was compounded by the fact that their individualistic temperaments suited the pursuit of music as a solitary undertaking. However, with the increased institutionalisation of Western music in the late-Meiji and Taishō periods, some did  21 Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan,” in The Fin-de-Siècle World, ed. Michael Saler (London: Taylor & Francis, 2014), 262-263, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315748115. 22 Frederik L. Schodt, Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan--and Japan to the West (Berkeley CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2012), 86, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=904663. Reviews in the JWM report on “enjoyable,” “pleasing,” and “delightful” concerts given by musicians from various national flagships stationed in Yokohama, including those belonging to the Italian, French, US and Austrian navies. See, respectively, Japan Mail Office, JWM, September 21, 1901, 295; November 7, 1903, 507; May 19, 1906, 518; and April 18, 1908, 442. 214  eventually make real-life connections that had significant consequences for the future spread of the art form.  Although the two case studies contrast significantly, they also exhibit some underlying similarities: like the Tokyo Shichū Ongakukai, this group of individuals was also essentially a product of its time, reflecting and depending upon modern developments in the Meiji period. Investigating the accounts can thus shed light on broader processes of modernisation. The first was an opening up of access to novel forms of culture such as Western music, and new career opportunities to people across a range of backgrounds. Facilitated by the emergence of new technologies, as well as changing social norms, this coming together of disparate people through the mediation of a cultural practice was the continuation of a trend that had begun in the late-Tokugawa period. Secondly, the personal idiosyncrasies of the young Western enthusiasts reveal something about the place of eccentricity and a burgeoning sense of individualism in the cultural ambience of the late-Meiji period. Finally, the fact that some of them eventually came together to form a concrete community illustrates the transition away from an experimental Meiji period to an era in which hitherto nebulous arrangements were becoming more clearly defined and institutionalised. A Variety of Backgrounds: The Aristocrat, the Farmer and Others The emergence of the group of individuals considered in this case study can be placed in the context of a modern development that originated prior to the Meiji period. In the late-Tokugawa era, groups of like-minded people that cut across entrenched hierarchical class divisions often had a cultural or literary foundation. Examples include a 19th-century network of samurai, daimyō, and commoners with common literary interests that formed around writer, Suzuki Bokushi 鈴木牧之 (1770-1842), as well as communities organised around the sharing of cultural pastimes like poetry and tending to flowers.23 In the Meiji  23 See respectively Takeshi Moriyama, Crossing Boundaries in Tokugawa Society Suzuki Bokushi, a Rural Elite Commoner (Boston: BRILL, 2013), 262-265, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=1115291; and Eiko Ikegami, “Waiting for the Flying Fish to Leap: Revisiting the Values and Individuality of Tokugawa People as Practiced,” in Values, Identity, and Equality in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japan, ed. James E. Ketelaar, Yasunori Kojima, and Peter Nosco (Boston: BRILL, 2015), 45-47, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=4003957. 215  period, similar culture-based networks emerged, making use of modern technologies and incorporating new normative notions of society. For example, the revitalisation of the tea-ceremony under the Urasenke tradition as a modern pastime made use of modern printing technology to produce textbooks and monthly journals for practitioners, and took an anti-elitist stance, targeting the general public, including women, as prospective members.24  The young Western music enthusiasts showed certain similarities, but also differences to the devotees of the tea-ceremony. They too relied on modern technological advances, specifically in the areas of manufacturing, transport and commerce, which had made Western musical instruments more readily available. However, unlike the ancient tradition that was the tea-ceremony, Western music was an entirely novel import and, for that reason, a degree of exposure to Western cultural currents, and contacts with Westerners themselves were advantageous for those who became involved with it. The extent to which the individuals could avail themselves of these modern advances and foreign contacts differed depending on geographical location and socio-economic status. The following section paints a picture of a diverse array of individuals encountering Western music, and highlights their similarities and differences in terms of their connectedness to modernising influences and access to Western musical instruments. Born into the aristocracy, Konoye Hidemarō had a privileged and cosmopolitan upbringing that exposed him to Western social and cultural currents. Hidemarō had many opportunities to socialise with Western and Japanese elites, and foreign languages and Western music were part of the auditory backdrop to his early life. In an interview in 1965, Hidemarō recalled the domestic ambience of his youth: “The house was quite Westernised, and there was a musical atmosphere…my mother still had a lingering memory of the Rokumeikan days. And our old [bent-backed] grandmother would sing nursery rhymes in French….” Hidemarō was taught English from kindergarten and spoke it when conversing with foreign dignitaries and their relatives. Exposure to foreign languages and music were closely associated for him: “…one could say I was just mimicking, but I was brought up with English and other foreign languages and so I naturally grew accustomed to foreign music  24 Oshikiri, Gathering for Tea, 109-119. 216  too.”25 According to his granddaughter, Fumiko, the young Hidemarō had many hobbies and cultural interests. However, it was Western music which came to dominate.26 Hidemarō’s upbringing thus inculcated in him the sense of a broad connection to Western cultural influences, including music.  Composer, Shimoosa Kannichi, was born in the same year as Konoye Hidemarō. However, the circumstances of his early life could not have been more different. He had little or no contact with foreigners or other elements of Meiji cosmopolitanism. He grew up in the village of Kurihashi in rural Saitama Prefecture which, while geographically close to Tokyo, was culturally remote. Even as late as the early 20th century when Shimoosa was growing up, the region was isolated from the modernising trends that had been sweeping the metropolitan centres. It had had almost no contact with Westerners and no Christian missionary had been active nearby. Despite his father being a teacher and later a school principal, Shimoosa’s upbringing was agrarian and modest, and his mother made her own udon.27 In his memoirs, Shimoosa evoked a sense of this isolation and remarked on Kurihashi’s cultural remoteness: “Only about one hour by steam or electric train from Tokyo, it was far from culture, a left-behind hamlet.” To emphasise its inaccessibility, he provided an anecdote about a village inhabitant who had bought a shabby old car and repurposed it as taxi to shuttle between Kurihashi and the capital.28 The Konoye family status and foreign connections allowed Hidemarō access to Western instruments unavailable to most Japanese in the early 20th century. As well as the harmonica gifted to him by his father and his love of the street music of the jinta discussed in the previous chapter, Hidemarō encountered music in the form of the violin, piano, and a phonograph. The first instrument Hidemarō attempted to master seriously was the violin. He learned the basic techniques by playing along to a recording of the song Gunkan Maachi (Warship March) which had been popular since the Sino-Japanese War and was released on disc by Columbia Records in 1903.29 Another instrument in the family’s possession was a  25 Jūichi Miyazawa, Meiji wa Ikite Iru: Gakudan no Senkusha wa Kataru [Meiji Is Alive: Pioneers of the Musical World Tell Their Stories] (Tōkyō: Ongaku no Tomosha, 1965), 237-238. 26 Fumiko Konoye, interview by author, Tokyo, June 2, 2021. 27 Mutsuo Nakajima and Tadao Ubukata, interview by author, Kazo City, Saitama Prefecture, January 12, 2021. 28 Shimofusa, Utagoyomi, 49-50.  29 Fumiko Konoye, “Konoye Hidemarō to Konoye Ongaku Kenkyūjo ni Tsuite,” [About Konoye Hidemarō and the Konoye Foundation Of Music], accessed February 18, 2023, https://www.hidemarokonoye.com/about-us. 217  Steinway grand piano that his father had procured as a cast-off from the Rokumeikan, and Hidemarō noted that that the household became properly musical upon its acquisition in the third decade of the Meiji period (1897-1907). He also mentioned owning a prototype phonograph as invented by Edison, on which he heard orchestral and band music for the first time.30  Furthermore, Hidemarō’s education at Gakushūin, a school in Tokyo for sons of the elite, played an important role as it brought him into contact with talented music teachers and opened doors for future study. He learnt shōka under composers of that genre, Nōshō Benjirō and Komatsu Kōsuke and, still at Junior High School, took violin lessons under Sueyoshi Yūji, a prominent violinist who was the leader of a string quartet.31 This spurred Hidemarō’s interest in the formal study of music when he progressed to High School. While still at Gakushūin, Hidemarō visited the TMS on a regular basis. There, he met talented and knowledgeable academics and musicians. Most significantly, he received an introduction to composer, Yamada Kōsuke, under whom he learnt composition and music theory, and made such rapid progress that he became a substitute teacher at Yamada’s private music school, Yamada Juku.32  Shimoosa’s encounter with Western music took place in circumstances far removed from Hidemarō’s sophisticated world of pianos, violins and gramophones. As discussed in the previous chapter, his first real contact with Western music was at the village school when he heard a teacher accompanying shōka on the organ, stimulating a love for the instrument that inspired him to learn to play it. He also wrote affectionately about the unsophisticated music that was part of the tapestry of his rural upbringing. He recalled, for example, listening to a ditty sung by an old man at a local festival to attract customers to his toy stall. Such was the strength of the auditory memory that he was able to transcribe the “simple melody” and words in Western stave notation (See Figure 6.1).33   30 Konoye, “Wakakihi,” 2. 31 Mehl, Not by Love Alone, 370. 32 Miyazawa, Meiji wa Ikite Iru, 238-240. 33 Shimofusa, Utagoyomi, 51-53.  218  Figure 6.1. Shimoosa’s Transcription of the Ditty. Kan'ichi Shimofusa, Utagoyomi (A Detailed Account of Songs) (Tōkyō: Ongaku No Tomosha, 1954), 52. Obtained from Mr. Nakajima Mutsuo and reproduced under fair-use principle.34  The social circumstances, and access to musical instruments and tuition in the lives of the young Hidemarō and Shimoosa Kannichi thus contrasted starkly. Other individuals add to this diversity of backgrounds. Like Shimoosa, Komatsu Kōsuke was also born and raised in a rural area, this time much further from Tokyo. He described his village of birth in provincial Akita Prefecture, northern Japan as “half-agricultural, half-commercial,” and noted that, because of the remote location, his primary school could boast neither a piano nor an organ. He claimed to have forgotten the first shōka that he learnt at school, but recalled the traditional Japanese songs and dances unique to his village which had been passed down the generations.35 Composer and educator, Nagai Kōji was born into a low-ranking samurai family in Tottori Prefecture, western Japan. As a boy, he was expected to engage in agricultural labour, and his farming duties were a potential barrier to his being allowed to pursue his dreams at the TMS. He finally persuaded his father to allow him to enrol at the school and make the long, arduous journey up to Tokyo. His father agreed to pay the tuition fees as long as Kōji covered the costs of transportation out of his own hard-earned savings.36 By contrast, the cellist, Saitō Hideo, enjoyed more secure financial circumstances. He was also born into a samurai household and inherited land from his father, the linguist and English teacher, Saitō Hidesaburō. Hideo wrote that this gave him the freedom to pursue music without the worry of making a living.37  34 The ditty went: “Choi choi kai nayo, yatara ni kai nayo. Muko no hashi kara, kocchi no hashi made…Ni hyaku to go jū dayo” [Come, come and buy. Buy lots and lots. From over there to here…It’s 250 (yen)]. 35 Komatsu, Ongaku no Hana Hiraku Koro, 3-4. 36 Nagai, Koshikata Hachijūnen, 21-24. 37 Hideo Saitō, “Ongaku to Watashi” [Music and I], in Minshū Ongaku Kyōkai (ed.), Ongaku to Shōgai, 324. 219  Awkward Mavericks The geographic and socio-economic divisions presented above were practical barriers to the formation of any kind of bonds of sociability between the individuals. In addition to this, their temperaments suited them to the practice of Western music as a solitary rather than a communal activity. They tended to be unconventional, fond of their own company and single-minded in their determination to master the art form. This study has already encountered singular and driven people who played a pioneering role in the informal spread of Western music. For example, the network of individuals involved in the founding of Jūjiya Gakkiten, Hara Taneaki, Toda Kindō, and Kurata Shigetarō, showed determination to make their shop a commercial success in the entrepreneurial milieu of 1870s Ginza. In a very different context, Tokuhiro Taimu, who had a single-minded vision for the future role of the ichigenkin, was a solitary individual who preferred an isolated, and sometimes hermitic existence.  Despite a prevailing atmosphere of conformity, societal conditions in the late-Meiji period were conducive to unconventional attitudes and behaviours. William Brecher contends that eccentricity was incompatible with the normative goals of self-fulfilment for the sake of society and the nation. Devoid of utilitarian value, traits of “eccentricity, withdrawal, and traditionalism” were, in fact, discredited by the Meiji state and associated with “evil customs of the past,” which the Charter Oath of 1868 had sought to abolish.38 However, as this study has shown, the Meiji period was characterised by confusion, and rapid socio-economic and cultural change. In this regard, it bore a resemblance to the late-18th century, a “restless, curious, and receptive” age, during which a literary genre celebrating eccentricity known as kijinden became popular.39  Brecher notes that these were the historical conditions for “a golden age of Japanese eccentrics,” in which “aesthetic eccentricity” favoured “…individuality, emotion, and intuition over conventional behavior,” as well as “egocentrism and …[a] desire for detachment from occupational responsibilities,  38 See William Puck Brecher, Japan’s Private Spheres: Autonomy in Japanese History, 1600-1930 (Boston: BRILL, 2021), 167-168, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=6532390.  39 Marius B. Jansen, Japan and Its World: Two Centuries of Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 7-8, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv25wxcm9, cited in William Puck Brecher, The Aesthetics of Strangeness: Eccentricity and Madness in Early Modern Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013), 3, https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780824839123. 220  ideological constraints, or commercial pressures.”40 The accounts of Konoye Hidemarō, Takagi Tōroku, Yamada Kōsaku and Nagai Kōji below closely mirror this characterisation. Hidemarō Konoye certainly exhibited “detachment from occupational responsibilities” and valued “individuality…over conventional behavior.” Reflecting on the family’s unorthodox leanings, his elder brother, Fumimarō, mused: “…we have gradually created a family of eccentrics, and it is therefore no mystery that we have produced all kinds of personalities.”41 Unlike Fumimarō who, by convention, followed his father into politics,42 Hidemarō, as the second son, was free to carve out an independent career as he saw fit. Normally, this would have meant involvement in politics or the temple. He chose, however, to ignore custom and follow the path of Western music instead. According to his granddaughter, Hidemarō was aware of his own contrarian disposition and examples of his singular and sometimes mischievous nature at home and at school abound. One sports day, for example, he ran around the sports track in the opposite direction to everyone else as a jape. During his time at Gakushūin, he was chastised on sixteen occasions for such misdemeanours.43  Hidemarō’s escapades reveal an individualistic and extroverted young man with a wilful desire to be different. Although it is difficult to make any definitive link from the existing sources, it is possible to speculate that his passion for Western music was an extension of this eccentric and playful personality. William Brecher has suggested a connection between playfulness, eccentricity and a burgeoning sense of individualism. According to Brecher, activities such as religious worship and leisurely pursuits carried out in “private sphere” environments such as the home were under pressure from the Meiji government, which attempted to reformulate them in such a way as to tie them to state interests.44 Brecher quotes Chinese classics scholar, Xiaoxiang Yang, who writes about the importance of the private sphere as a place to play:  40 Brecher, The Aesthetics of Strangeness, 4-5. 41 Konoye, “Konoye Hidemarō.” 42 Fumimarō became a member of the Kizoku Giin 貴族議員 (Upper House) in 1916 at the age of 25. 43 Konoye, interview; and Konoye, “Konoye Hidemarō.” 44 Brecher, Japan’s Private Spheres, 7-16. 221  Tensions in the private sphere are always carefully regulated as a form of play. As an attitude, play is dissociated from seriousness….As an activity, both physical and mental, play is the opposite of work, if we understand “work” to mean things we do to fulfil social and familial obligations. In the realm of play, one is allowed to generate values where values would not ordinarily be found….45 It was natural that unconventional individuals such as Konoye sought an outlet for creative self-expression in the private sphere of the home. This fits with the findings of Chapter 5, which show that it was in the privacy of the domestic setting that Japanese could express creativity by experimenting playfully with novel pastimes such as Western music.  Unlike the ebullient Konoye, the eccentricities of other individuals took the form of introversion and awkwardness. Takagi Tōroku expressed an awareness that he was atypical. He described how his infatuation with playing the organ caused him to shun the company of his peers: “In my childhood, the only thing I enjoyed was playing the organ.” He added that although his friends would gather round to hear him perform, they would soon become bored and rush outside. “No matter what, I could not lose myself in play in the same way as my friends.” While the tone is self-deprecating and slightly regretful, Takagi’s recollections hint that he derived a sense of pride from his single-minded devotion to the organ. After being cajoled into playing the organ for his uncle’s friend, Takagi reflected on his own eccentricity, writing: “…I realised that I was a ‘mysterious child’ at that time.”46 Similarly, Yamada Kōsaku was a lonely and awkward child who developed a passion for the Western music that he heard around him. Previous chapters have shown how Yamada was influenced by hymns, military marches, and also the enchanting sound of a piano emanating from a neighbour’s house. A sickly youth, Yamada too did not spend long in the company of children his own age. He was subjected to bullying at school, forcing him to move in to his elder sister’s residency in Tokyo. Like Takagi, he admitted to being a solitary boy, prone to displays of eccentric behaviour. He would, for example, often spend time gazing and singing down a nearby well. Illustrating his passion for making music, he  45 Xiaoshang Yang, Metamorphosis of the Private Sphere: Gardens and Objects in Tang- Song Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003), 252, cited in Brecher, Japan’s Private Spheres, 12. 46 Takagi, Takagi Tōroku: Ai no Yasokyoku, 21-25. 222  described an accident in which the school signboard fell on his feet when he was beating it like a drum while singing. As she was fixing his bandage, his mother quipped “are you going to die singing?”47   Educator, Nagai Kōji recorded a similar anecdote that revealed an eccentricity combined with a steely determination to master Western music. When he was about seven years old, an uncle came to stay at his parents’ home in Tottori Prefecture. Every night, this uncle would sing a particular song to his children. Nagai was a timid child and fearful of this relative. However, desirous to learn the song, he “…listened in secret from the next room and, by the second night, had learnt the whole song.” Two nights later, as Nagai was singing the song out loud to himself, “…his ‘scary’ uncle was standing behind him.” Challenged as to where he had learnt the song, “since it was a song that could not be known by anyone in Tottori,” Nagai eventually confessed. His uncle then laughed and responded: “My children fell asleep while I was singing the song, but you learnt it!” After this episode, the uncle would teach Nagai new songs every night.48   These accounts suggest that the individuals enjoyed experimenting with Western music as a solitary and - given the suspicion the government harboured toward eccentric behaviour and “private sphere” activities – an arguably countercultural undertaking. From the early 1890s, the art form started to gain traction in Japanese society, particularly in the elite cosmopolitan circles in which Konoye Hidemarō moved. As a cultural novelty, it would have appealed to unconventional characters like Hidemarō and, at the “dawning of a new age”49 when Japan was undergoing rapid transformation, immersion in the world of music would have provided him a purpose and identity. For less extrovert, but equally singular characters like Takagi, Yamada, and Nagai, social awkwardness and diffidence hid a latent artistic nature coupled with a burning ambition to learn more about Western music. A possible explanation for the eccentricity, and social awkwardness exhibited by these young Western music enthusiasts is that they instinctively felt themselves to be part of a new generation which valorised emotional expression and individualism more than the  47 Yamada, Harukanari, 13-17. 48 Nagai, Koshikata, 3-5. 49 This term, reimeiki 黎明期, appears on the website for the Konoye Foundation. See Konoye, “Konoye Hidemarō.” 223  preceding one. An outline for further exploration of this interpretation is proposed in the Conclusion to this study.  Bonds of Sociability The accounts above describe a group of discrete individuals whose only association was a shared interest in Western music, coupled with a singular determination to pursue the art form. It is possible, although not explicit in their accounts, that some of them harboured a longing for new forms of sociability. For example, provincial isolation was behind Nagai Kōji’s motivation to enrol at the TMS and become connected to the wider world of Western music in Japan. As mentioned above, he had to persuade his parents, particularly his father, of the benefits of leaving the provincial family farm for Tokyo. Nagai’s account of his preparations for the journey betrays an anticipation of adventure coupled with a conviction to make a success of his new life in the capital. On his departure, he left his father a letter promising that he would definitely succeed. Determined to make true his promise, he recalled rehearsing songs and reviewing his English-language notes enroute, in preparation for the entrance examinations he would take on arrival.50 It was the increased institutionalisation of Western music, particularly from the Taishō period, that eventually gave rise to communities of interest. Through the mediation of institutions such as the TMS, individuals who - other than a shared interest in Western music - would have had nothing in common did eventually meet in real-life and form solid bonds of sociability. In certain cases, older members became sempai (mentors) to their juniors, and some of these relationships evolved into collaborative efforts that had significant consequences for the spread of Western music.  With his aristocratic background, Konoye Hidemarō had had privileged access to acclaimed musicians from an early age. As well as studying shōka at Gakushūin under composers of that genre, Nōshō Benjirō and Komatsu Kōsuke, he was also taught at Tokyo Imperial University by the organist and composer, Shimazaki Akatarō 島崎赤太郎 (1874-1933) and the previously mentioned composer of military music, Setoguchi Tōkichi.51 At the TMS, Hidemarō became the first person to study composition under Yamada Kōsuke. He  50 Nagai, Koshikata, 22-31. 51 Miyazawa, Meiji wa Ikite Iru, 238. As noted previously, Setoguchi wrote the famous Gunkan Maachi (Warship March). 224  had a lasting respect for his sempai. According to composer and mutual acquaintance, Miyahara Teiji 宮原禎次 (1899-1976), “In 1922, Konoye quit composition and studied how to become a conductor on his own. He graduated in 1923. However, he went back to the TMS in April 1924, and asked Yamada Sensei to check some sonatas and other piano compositions.”52  The connection between the two men both reflected and furthered the institutionalisation of Western music. Yamada and Hidemarō went on to co-found Japan’s first professional symphony orchestra, the Japan Symphonic Association in 1925. This orchestra split and half the players joined Hidemarō in his New Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo, which was formed in October 1926 and eventually became the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 1951. Saitō Hideo, who had gone with his friend, Konoye Hidemarō, to study in Leipzig in 1923, was appointed principal cellist of the New Symphony Orchestra in 1927.  Thus, what had started as a grouping of discrete individuals with common interests eventually fostered relationships which had long-lasting consequences for the spread of Western music. Yamada and Konoye were particularly influential. In addition to Miyahara Teiji, individuals who became successful after receiving tuition from either or both of them include composer and conductor Yamamoto Naotada 山本直忠 (1904-1965), and composer Ishii Gorō 石井五郎 (1903-1978). Writer of film music Yasuji Kiyose 清瀬保二 (1900-1981), who was mentioned in the Introduction of this study as having a strong influence on the renowned 20th-century composer Takemitsu Tōru 武満徹 (1930-1996), was himself taught composition by Yamada. Finally, composer, conductor and jazz musician Kami Kyōsuke 紙恭輔 (1902-1981) played the double bass in the New Symphony Orchestra.  Focusing on two contrasting case studies that involved groups of individuals who were talented in, and passionate about Western music, this chapter has shown how the informal spread of Western music mediated new but distinct modes of sociability in the Meiji era. In different ways, both cases are illustrative of the changes ushered in by Meiji modernity. They show the effects of the introduction and spread of Western music into the  52 Teiji Miyahara, Kenka Baka [A Quarrelsome Fool] (Tokyo: Sōshisha, 1972), 43-44. 225  daily lives of Japanese people, and how this opened the way to new, hitherto unimagined opportunities and career paths for dedicated and talented individuals.   226    227  Conclusion  This concluding chapter has two main objectives. The first is to revisit the aims, methodological approaches and findings in this multifaceted study, discussing and tying together key interrelated themes. The second is to position it as a springboard for future research. An extended section of this conclusion provides specific ideas and suggestions for potential areas of inquiry, which can build on the methodology, specific findings and broader implications of this current work.  The Importance of Informal Spread The formal, government-led introduction of Western music during the Meiji era, first in the military and later - with even greater impact - as a component of primary education, was not sufficient on its own to account for the eventual espousal of the art form in Japan. Western music gradually gained general acceptance over the course of the Meiji period, a process that came to fruition in the subsequent Taishō period, particularly after the importation of the gramophone and the popularisation of the radio. More Japanese became actively involved as musicians, composers, teachers and in other roles, and eventually some became renowned figures in the world of music in the 20th century.  The central claim of this study is that just as important as this top-down formal process of adoption was an informal and bottom-up dynamic, which played out across a variety of sectors of Meiji society and drew strength from the exploratory and experimental zeitgeist of the period. The independent and private routes by which Western music spread in this way were partly dependent on the infrastructure that had been created by the formal processes. However, they were not necessarily aligned with the state’s intentions and had an impetus of their own which depended on the prerogatives and activities of a host of people. Under this influence, Western music gradually came to be viewed no longer solely as a crucial trapping of Western culture to be adopted and instrumentalised for the sake of becoming a civilised nation, or at least projecting that image. It transcended these non-musical and utilitarian functions to become part of the fabric of Japanese society. A microhistorical methodology focusing on the lives of individuals has brought to the fore specific processes by which the Japanese eventually came to accept and enjoy Western 228  music. It has shown that there was not simply one, but multiple adoptions involving a wide variety of people from diverse social backgrounds who had different skills and objectives. The ensemble of characters considered in this history were not only practitioners involved directly with the music such as composers, conductors and musicians, but also those with indirect associations such as Christian converts, business people, and amateur enthusiasts. Its members ranged from reform-minded individuals who rode the wave of modernity, such as the founders of the musical instrument store, Jūjiya Gakkiten, to individuals whose lives represented an attachment to older traditions, like the master and advocate of the ichigenkin, Tokuhiro Taimu.  Each encountered Western music under different circumstances, and their motivations for engaging with it varied. For some, it was seen as part of a Westernising package that was associated with Christianity; for others, its sheer novelty and unexplored potential represented an opportunity for business and adventure; and for many, it became an enjoyable and fulfilling pastime that could be pursued at home. While considered, by some, a form of light entertainment and diversion, it could also be applied to more serious and educative purposes and, for a number of young talented enthusiasts, it came to define their lives. For all, however, becoming involved with Western music was a way to navigate a turbulent period and find one’s place in a rapidly changing Japan.  The selected individuals were all, in their own way, pioneers. The founders of Jūjiya Gakkiten, for example, were exploring unchartered territory when they decided to establish and run, first a religious bookstore, and later a musical instrument shop. At a time when this kind of enterprise was still untested, they progressed cautiously, experimenting with different approaches and business models. The network that grew up around the instrument shop consisted of individuals who dedicated themselves to learning the business, some spending time in Europe or the United States to do so. Similarly, unlike successor generations, the group of aspiring composers, conductors, musicians and others born in the mid- to late-Meiji period had nobody to whom they could look for guidance or inspiration. However, encounters with Western music engendered in them an enthusiasm and single-minded desire to master the art form, and eventually opened up new life opportunities. Finally, musicians who were members of commercial bands like the Tokyo 229  Shichū Ongakukai formed a distinctly modern type of community, and deployed their skills and connections as a ticket to adventure. The study set the scene by emphasising the discrepancy in mutual musical sensibilities between the Japanese and Western residents that persisted throughout the Meiji period and beyond. Perceptions of this gap were reflected in personal accounts as well as the English- and Japanese-language print media. This stand-off was fed by mutual misunderstanding and prejudice. Some aspiring Japanese musicians were self-critical and admitted concerns that their attempts to adopt Western music were inauthentic and superficial. Over time, the gap was closed through the myriad decisions and actions of individuals which resulted in the entry of Western music into the daily lives of Japanese people.  Following the chronology of the period, the themed chapters revealed the diverse circumstances in which Western music impacted the lives of Japanese individuals. In the early 1870s, ex-Samurai converts and others learnt and performed hymns and other religious music as part of the educational activities of Christian missionaries. Starting from the 1880s, the commercialisation of Western music by Jūjiya Gakkiten and other retailers and manufacturers made affordable musical instruments, scores and instructional material more accessible, and made Western music available to a widening sector of the Japanese public. The invention and marketing of the shikōkin was a concrete example of this. Promoted by Jūjiya Gakkiten as a device that could be enjoyed domestically, it became popular from the 1890s because of its simplicity and versatility. It was also in or around the home that a number of young individuals from a variety of backgrounds first encountered music played on Western instruments. This inculcated in them a desire to learn more, and set them on a path toward successful careers in music.  The diverse scenarios in which Western music was encountered and adopted are linked in unexpected and important ways, and these connections reflect the transient and experimental nature of the Meiji period and the sheer speed at which change occurred. In a short space of time, the Japanese faced transformations which affected all aspects of their lives. In the midst of a headlong rush into modernity, seemingly unrelated elements were often overlaid and intertwined. Tracing the informal adoption and spread of Western music 230  is a way of capturing this protean interconnectedness and flux. The following section examines three of these overarching and overlapping themes.  Commerce, Play and Pedagogy At the intersection of the main strands of the account of the informal spread of Western music, the history of Jūjiya Gakkiten and other enterprises in its network demonstrates these surprising interrelations most clearly. The shop’s establishment and development, and the network of people who became involved in its activities played a pivotal role in the informal spread of Western music. With connections to the Presbyterian mission located in the rapidly modernising district of Ginza, the shop’s three main founders, Hara Taneaki, Toda Kindō and Kurata Shigetarō, set up a business that played a major role in propelling the spread of Western music. The business and those involved with it thus connect Protestant missionary activities, through capitalism, commerce, and technological innovation to a burgeoning consumer culture, all the time widening the opportunities for the public to encounter Western music. This important, yet overlooked, commercial aspect of the story also encompasses the educational and promotional role played by music-related magazines and journals, and the significance of jinta music, primarily used for commercial advertising, in inspiring the young music enthusiasts who heard it.  Reflecting this commercial focus, the chronological emphasis of the study has been on the mid- to late-Meiji period from around the late 1870s to the 1900s. After the initial adoption of Western music in the military and schools, but prior to the institutionalisation and professionalisation of the art form that occurred largely in the Taishō and early-Shōwa periods, this was a time of experimentation and entrepreneurship during which the Japanese tried out aspects of Western-style modernity including forms of culture such as music. During this period, Western music was gradually pulled into the orbit of a nascent urban-based mass consumer culture and, like other leisure-oriented activities, was represented and promoted in a growing print media and advertising industry.  Another related thread tying various case studies comes under the heading of ‘play‘. The Japanese engaged with Western music on their own terms, experimenting and playing with this novel form of material culture and taking from it what they needed. Applying the concept of play as an analytical tool to better understand the development and exchange of culture has received little attention from scholars. This is surprising given its importance in 231  human behaviour and interactions. Johan Huizinga writes that play “predates culture but it is part of the civilisation in which we live.”1 Some academics have made a case for using play as a framework by which to study various aspects of society, including business, the creative arts, religion, and the formation of communities. In the context of Japanese studies and history, this framework has been even less utilised.2  The informal adoption and spread of Western music in Japan lends itself perfectly to interpretation through the framework of play. Christopher Small states that one of his aims is to discover what happens when music traverses cultures and “members of one culture can come to understand and to enjoy, and perhaps creatively misunderstand, the musicking of others.”3 For the Japanese, playing creatively with Western music was a way of engaging with, and trying out a specific form of Western culture. Japan’s predicament in the Meiji period was that the country was forced to deal with powerful modernising forces and adapt to alien modes-of-being and value systems without becoming completely unmoored from its traditions and history. This required that the Japanese confront modern Western ideas, practices and technologies openly, and adapt them in ways that were compatible with native practices and sensibilities.  This was complicated by the fact that it was difficult for the Japanese to categorise and to place Western music, a completely novel phenomenon, within existing Japanese culture. Its adoption therefore called for a creative attitude and an openness to playful experimentation. In its religious, commercial and social contexts, the reception of Western music created a test bed where Japanese both individually and as members of communities could experience and dabble in an aspect of modernity in a familiar, everyday environment. The theme of play is evident in different chapters of this study, both in the creative ways in which Western music was enjoyed and also the inventiveness of those who facilitated its spread. The section below considers the implications of this with respect to two specific examples: the shikōkin; and the adoption of Western music as a domestic undertaking.  1 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: a Study of Play-Element in Culture (London: Routledge, 2013), 4. 2 Joy Hendry and Massimo Raveri have compiled a number of essays which consider aspects of Japanese history and culture through the lens of play. See Joy Hendry and Massimo Raveri (eds.), Japan at Play: the Ludic and the Logic of Power (London: Routledge, 2002). 3 Small, Musicking, 1-18.  232  One key mode of play the Japanese adopted was mimesis. Michael Lucken distinguishes this from imitation, and contends that mimesis lies behind the processes by which Japanese assimilated many aspects of Western technology and culture, and adapted them to suit their own needs.4 The shikōkin case study is a concrete example of this. It shows how the Japanese went beyond mere imitation in their approach to Western music, and the invention, commercialisation and popularisation of the device exemplify the creative and playful attitude of Jūjiya Gakkiten and its customers. Easy to operate, and flexible in terms of the different genres it could be used to play, the shikōkin was fondly received by the public and retained its popularity well into the final decade of the period. In a 1907 article in the Asahi Shinbun, it was affectionately described as a toy, a clear indication that it was perceived of, and used in a playful way. The idea of the shikōkin as an object for play has deeper implications. Providing examples of non-utilitarian luxuries and amusements that have stimulated developments in unexpected fields, Steven Johnson contends that play and the pursuit of ‘delight’ have been as important in the evolution of the modern world as war, politics, and economics.5 He argues that music generates such a 'delight' and that one offshoot of its ludic possibilities has been the invention of self-playing instruments such as a flute-playing toy in 18th-century Paris. Johnson claims that the technology behind these kinds of device is based on music’s incorporation of patterns and codes, both harmonic and rhythmic. He points out that the programming of self-playing instruments to play different pieces inspired non-musical technologies like the programmable loom and, via computer punch cards, the software and hardware of the computer age. He provides the pianola as another example. Invented in the early 1900s, this instrument also stimulated business around the provision of hardware and software components.6 Predating the pianola by almost two decades, the shikōkin is a lesser known example of this kind of programmable device. It clearly gave delight to its Japanese users and generated business for Jūjiya Gakkiten.  The shikōkin is of additional significance when one considers it alongside analogous devices from Japan’s own past. A programmable oddity which appeared in an earlier period  4 Lucken, Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts, 44-47. 5 Steven Johnson, Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World (London: Macmillan, 2017), 1-13. 6 Ibid., 61-99. 233  was the karakuri ningyō からくり人形 (karakuri doll). Writing about the development of this item as well as other automata and stage props used in kabuki theatre that were manufactured by artisans of the Tokugawa Period, Yamaguchi Masao contends that, as a consequence of their experience with such objects, the Japanese were able to approach industrialisation in the 19th century through “a spirit of play” rather than “calculated economic logic.” He claims that the Japanese gained a sense of familiarity with, not antipathy toward machines because the technology had originated in the ludic world of entertainment.7 As with the karikuri ningyō, the Japanese affection for the shikōkin may therefore have been an illustration of their coming to terms with machines and industrial modernity in general, as it allowed them to play around with a novel technological device.  The viewpoint that the Japanese took a playful approach to Western music can be extended to its adoption in the home. The increased availability and affordability of small musical instruments from the 1880s gave the middle-classes the opportunity to play freely with an aspect of modernity in their own habitats. The shikōkin and other Western and traditional Japanese instruments were marketed for domestic enjoyment, and were meant to be used for a variety of occasions. The Japanese often combined musical instruments creatively and playfully in ensembles that mixed different genres. The ludic potential in domestic musicmaking was recognised and promoted in the specialist music magazine, Ongaku Sekai. For example, ‘toy’ instruments were touted as suitable for encouraging children to enjoy musical activities in the home. In the same magazine, instruments, scores and music lessons were advertised alongside miscellanea for use in non-musical domestic pastimes including parlour games and sporting goods.  This playful approach was accompanied by a more serious, educational intent. Several of the adoptions of Western music considered in this study were associated with opportunities for education and self-improvement. The pedagogical dimension of the engagement with Western music went beyond government initiatives. Before the singing of shōka was introduced in public primary education, for example, missionary schools included hymns and religious music as part of the curriculum alongside subjects like English. This  7 Masao Yamaguchi, “Karakuri: the Ludic Relationship between Man and Machine in Tokugawa Japan,” in Hendry and Raveri, Japan at Play, 72-83. 234  connection between Western music and pedagogy was picked up by Tokuhiro Taimu who was inspired by modern notions of education when he resolved to change the culture around the ichigenkin.  Pedagogy through music was also important in a commercial context. Jūjiya Gakkiten centred its business strategy around education, selling instructional materials together with musical instruments. The magazines related to Western music, for example Ongaku Zasshi and Ongaku Sekai, were also intended to be educational. Many of the articles and features had a didactic tone, informing the readers about the history of Western music, or instructing them how to learn instruments or play particular pieces. As part of this, domestic musicmaking was seen as an educational as well as a playful pursuit. It was, for example, promoted as an activity to foster better relationships within the family, and to educate and develop minds of young children. Also, it was in the “private sphere” of the home that young music enthusiasts such as Konoye Hidemarō could experiment with Western music in a playful, yet - as their ambition to learn and master the art form attests - serious way.  Play and seriousness are not necessarily mutually exclusive, particularly in a Japanese context. Exploring a Japanese approach to playfulness, Rupert Cox notes that, whereas Western playful activities are generally unstructured and spontaneous, the Japanese have tended to mix opposing characteristics, subject themselves to constraints, and apply concentration and hard work to playful endeavours. From the pursuit of self-cultivation on Buddhist pilgrimages in the Heian period (794-1181) to participation in geidō 芸道 (performing arts, but implying a sense of accomplishment) during the Tokugawa era, Cox provides examples from Japanese history to support his argument. He also claims that the tendency to mix seriousness with play has continued in contemporary Japan, and that this explains earnest attitudes the Japanese adopt to cultural pursuits such as gambling, martial arts, the tea-ceremony and even karaoke.8 The Japanese playful-yet-serious approach to their adoption of Western music in the Meiji era is therefore consistent with this interpretation.  8 Rupert Cox, “Is there as Japanese Way of Playing?” in Hendry and Raveri, Japan at Play, 169-185. The same volume includes an essay that examines the Japanese playful yet serious attitude towards karaoke. See William H. Kelly, "Training for Leisure: Karaoke and the Seriousness of Play in Japan," in Ibid., 152-168.  235  Further Research  This study will be of interest to academics from different disciplines and can stimulate research in a variety of subject areas. Firstly, for historians who specialise in the musical encounter between Japan and the West during the Meiji period, it provides new perspectives. By emphasising the importance of informal processes of adoption and spread, which depended on the actions of a wide range of individual actors, it complements the existing institution-focused historiography and enables a deeper and richer understanding of the specific social factors behind how and why Western music gradually became more widely accepted. A microhistorical and biographical methodology has uncovered a human story and demonstrated how individuals’ lives were touched in unexpected ways by their involvement with the art form. It has emphasised that the Japanese were not mere passive recipients, but exhibited agency by adopting Western music in creative, sometimes playful ways to suit their own objectives.  However, the implications of this study go beyond the topic of Western music’s adoption in Meiji-era Japan. Because its scope encompasses a diversity of themes and perspectives, it is also of interest to other cultural historians of Meiji-era Japan, scholars of cultural exchange and adaptation in the context of modernisation in other geographical situations, and musicologists engaging with the study of history to investigate how Western music has travelled across cultures. The dynamics of this specific exchange reflect transformations of the period as a whole and provide a unique insight into processes of modernisation.  An exploration of the informal adoption of Western music has brought together some of the key elements that characterise not only Meiji modernity, but also changes happening in other parts of the world. These include the influence of Protestant missions, the spread of capitalism and international commercial ties, an evolving role for women, technological change and societal attitudes toward it, the beginnings of a bourgeois domesticity and a mass-consumer society, intercultural encounters, and new ideas about individual and communal identities. Studying the interrelations between these components of modernity provides a richer understanding of the complex relationship between culture and the broader currents of modernisation. 236  An inevitable drawback of this cross disciplinary, multi-thematic approach, however, is that it has not been possible to give some of these broad subject areas the thorough treatment they warrant. Nevertheless, the forays made here open up a rich seam of ideas for potential future research. The following section suggests other directions in which this work can be taken further. These range from broad themes that draw on conceptual approaches developed here to specific topic areas related to the adoption of Western music in Japan.  At the broadest level, this study should stimulate more cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration. A fundamental contribution is that it has brought together the disciplines of history and musicology to probe the interconnected processes of societal transformation. The two have not traditionally communicated well with each other. Jeffrey H. Jackson and Stanley C. Pelkey ask why this is the case given that music represents an essential part of the human experience, and they call for more dialogue between them.9 However, there are positive signs that this stand-off between the disciplines is changing. Jane F. Fulcher has recognised that musicologists and cultural historians are increasingly posing the same kinds of questions around issues such as cultural identity and its expression, and are using “music as a privileged point of entry“ to probe these.10 Hopefully, this study will encourage historians, not only of Japan, but also of other regions and civilisations to value music as a way to deepen understandings of cultural encounters and exchange, particularly in periods of great change. A suggestion relating specifically to the adoption and spread of Western music in the Meiji period calls for widening its geographical scope. Margaret Mehl has encouraged such broadening in an article on the Shikama brothers from Sendai, one of whom returned from Tokyo to introduce Western music in his home city.11 Rihei Nakamura has also predicted that potential for future research lies in this direction.12 This study has focused on the  9 Jeffrey H. Jackson and Stanley C. Pelkey, Music and History: Bridging the Disciplines (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2005), xii. 10 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. Jane F. Fulcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 9-10, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195341867.013.0001. 11 Mehl, “Between the Global.”  12 Rihei Nakamura, Kirisutokyō to Nihon no Yōgaku [Christianity and Western Music in Japan] (Tōkyō: Ōzorasha, 1996), 580-581. 237  metropolitan areas of Tokyo and Yokohama. However, it has also shown how the shikōkin was promoted and became popular nationwide, and has underlined the fact that the young music enthusiasts hailed from diverse geographical locations. Another topic of interest that expands the geographical scope concerns the role of Japanese entertainers who ventured overseas to ply their trade. The example given in this study was Ikeda Tatsugorō, who became the first Japanese band musician to play on board a US military vessel in the 1890s. Further research into the contributions of itinerant musicians and other entertainers from Japan and elsewhere to late-19th and early-20th-century globalisation is worth pursuing. A geographical expansion of this nature, which brings together disparate materials, lends itself to the methodological approach adopted in this study. As mentioned above, a strong connection existed between education and the adoption of music. This is another broad theme which deserves further development and can be taken in several directions. Complementing the government-led introduction of music in public primary schools, the pedagogical uses of Western music were also vital to its informal spread and more detailed research into the position of music in education in this broader sense, therefore, presents opportunities for future research. For example, avenues of enquiry could include topics such as the teaching of Western music in missionary schools, and the perceptions of music or other aspects of culture practised in the home as a way to strengthen relationships between family members, and as a means of self-betterment for children.  Finally, a theme which promises scope for further research concerns the emotional dimension of encounters with Western music and its relation to ideas about self-expression and individualism in the late-Meiji period. This is a potentially fruitful area of investigation and thus warrants detailed treatment here. Considering the group of young individuals featured in this study who became successful in the world of Western music, the proposed research would turn the gaze inwards and examine their emotional reactions to encounters with Western music in the historical context of a growing awareness of the self. The sections below set out the following: a rationale for pursuing this line of research, a consideration of methodological approaches, a review of some primary sources from previous chapters, and suggestions for frameworks by which to interpret the findings. 238  By the late Meiji period when the young music enthusiasts were encountering Western music, the public perception of the art form was changing. Although still on the margins of the culture, it was starting to be viewed as a leisure activity to be embraced and enjoyed, and gradually becoming integrated into the sound worlds, particularly of young people attuned to new ideas and customs. The young individuals wrote candidly about their feelings. They professed to being moved by their encounters with Western music, and viewed it as a suitable vehicle for self-expression. An exploration of their emotional responses would therefore speak to one of the core questions set out in the Introduction. This concerns Japanese motivations for adopting Western music and embracing it over the long term. It addresses Jürgen Osterhammel’s remark quoted in the Introduction that: “…no one forced…the Japanese to listen to Gounod or Verdi.”13   As well as engaging with this key aspect of the adoption and spread of Western music in Japan, the research proposed here would also be an exciting contribution to the history of emotions, a growing sub-discipline which has attained a degree of maturity and sophistication in recent years.14 The microhistorical methodology that makes use of “ego-documents” (personal letters, diaries and memoirs), perfectly lends itself to further such investigations. This study has included numerous emotive descriptions of musical encounters: initial reactions of Westerners and Japanese to the music of the other; affection for the music of Christian worship professed by Tamura Naoomi and Uemura Masahisa; and the patriotic fervour instilled among the public by military music during times of war. The accounts of the young music enthusiasts are replete with emotional language, and a microhistorical approach can be applied to probe more deeply and extensively into them.  The primary source material presented here briefly revisits some of the findings from previous chapters. Yamada Kōsaku wrote about his early encounters with various genres of Western music, including hymns and military marches and, in particular, the “indescribably  13 Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt, 82, cited in Mehl, "Western Art Music in Japan,” 212. 14 Ute Fervert contends that the study of emotions in history can reveal human motivations for taking (or not taking) actions, and historian Lyndal Roper notes that, within her discipline, the interest in subjectivity and “how individuals make sense of their experience,” has grown in recent years. See Frank Biess, Alon Confino, Ute Frevert, Uffa Jensen, Lyndal Roper, and Daniela Saxer, “History of Emotions,” German History 28, no. 1 (2010), 68 and 70. For a recent comprehensive survey of the field that sets out the main theoretical approaches and methodologies, see Katie Barclay, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, and Peter N Stearns (eds.), Sources for the History of Emotions: A Guide (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2020).   239  beautiful performance” of the neighbour’s piano, all of which were formative experiences in his decision to become a composer. Shimoosa Kannichi recalled how he was moved when he first heard the “baby organ” at his primary school, and described the “secret pleasure” he felt when he was given the opportunity to play the instrument himself. Similarly, Takagi Tōroku professed to being charmed and moved by the domestic organ recitals and vocal harmonies of his musical sisters. Nagai Kōji was spellbound by the voice of the “teacher” singing the hymn that he himself had learnt furtively from his uncle. In some cases, the individuals reacted with giddy exhilaration. Takagi recalled feeling a mixture of excitement and curiosity when he heard the music of a jinta ensemble connected to a circus. Konoye Hidemarō was similarly entranced by jinta music at a young age. He also reported a visceral reaction to hearing a performance of La Marseilles by a French military band on the family’s phonograph, a rendition which, he recalled, “got his blood pumping the most.”15   These accounts are intended to stimulate further archival research. In addition to the individuals mentioned above, other composers born in the mid- to late-Meiji period published memoirs in which they wrote about early life experiences with Western music. Examples encountered during the archival research to this study include Ishikawa Yoshikazu 石川義一 (1887-1962), Miyahara Teiji 宮原禎次 (1899-1976), Kanai Kikuko 金井喜久子(1906-1986), Osawa Hisato 大澤壽人 (1907-1953), Koseki Yūji 古関裕而 (1909-1989), Matsushima Tsuneko 松島彜 (1890-1985), Taku Kōji 宅孝二 (1904-1983), and Hirao Kishirō 平尾貴四男 (1907-1953). Using these and other sources, researchers are encouraged to draw on, and contribute to the theoretical approaches that have emerged in the field of the history of emotions.  The following discussion briefly proposes some intellectual foundations for future research. A useful framework by which to analyse these accounts is to view them in the context of a generational mood shift that occurred towards the end of the Meiji period. The young music enthusiasts can be thought of as belonging to an emerging generation, one whose members were striving for emotional engagement with the world and individualistic  15 Konoye, “Wakakihi,” 2. This citation is included as it did not appear previously.  240  self-expression. Earl Kinmonth contends that a generational gap opened up sometime between 1895 and 1905. In the early 1900s, opportunities for youngsters to advance by tying their personal futures to the success of the nation declined, and this led to the emergence of a new generation of students, the hanmon seinen (“anguished youth”).16  The behaviour and attitudes of the young music enthusiasts conformed to, but also challenged some of the stereotypes in the press at the time, which accused the youth of “drifting into sentimentalism,”17 lacking “self-confidence” and an “unyielding spirit,” and admonished them to “start with a definite object in life…,”18 and channel their “egotistical” individualism through the “development of individual talents.”19 Socially awkward individuals such as Yamada Kōsaku, Takagi Tōroku, and Nagai Kōji were certainly reserved and short on self-confidence. However, the effort and dedication they, and others, applied to expressing themselves musically and gaining proficiency suggest that they were not the unmotivated young men portrayed in the press. Far from lacking spirit and originality, they appear to have been unwittingly following the advice dispensed in the articles. This material represents clear evidence that young people's inner lives and emotional states were a subject of active discussion in this era and, therefore, it can be reasonably expected that there will be primary sources relating to this which draws connections with music and other forms of culture. Further comparison and context can be found in the world of literature. Late-Meiji developments in the Japanese novel represented a cultural manifestation of this generational mood shift. A literary “inward turn” which started around 1890, flowered in  16 See Earl H. Kinmonth, The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought: From Samurai to Salary Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 334-337. According to Kinmonth, Takayama Chōgyū (“Rinjirō,” 1871-1902), the young intellectual and literary critic, was a spokesman for this generation and an advocate of Friedrich Nietzsche’s views on the primacy of individual “subjectivity, instinct and emotion.” See Ibid., 236-238. Kinmonth also points out that the journalist and historian, Tokutomi Iichirō (1863-1957), observed an “awakening of the self” in the Japanese youth in 1904 that set them off from the generation before. It was also Tokutomi who first analysed the term hanmon seinen in Iichirō Tokutomi, Taishō Seinen to Teikoku no Zentō [Taishō Youth and the Outlook for the Empire] (Min’yūsha, 1916), 1-22. The term had been in use prior to this. See Kinmonth, Self-Made Man, 206. 17 Japan Mail Office, JWM, August 8, 1903, 140-141. The original article in Shinjin No. 7, was entitled “Undercurrents of Thought in the Young Men’s World” and refers to a work by the late Takayama Rinjirō with the title “Jidai no Yōkyū” [Requirements of the Era].  18 Ibid., November 12, 1904, 541. The original article was by Mr. Ebina Danjō and entitled “The Extension of National Destinies and National Character.” 19 Ibid., June 27, 1908, 734. 241  the following decades with the emergence of a new genre known as the Shishosetsu 私小説 (the ‘I-novel’), a form of fiction characterised by a focus on the psychological terrain of the protagonists. Representative works included Ukigumo (Floating Cloud)20 and Futon (The Quilt).21 New ideas around self-expression, emotion, and individual subjectivity were articulated both in the world-views of the authors and through the characters and plots of their novels. A detailed, comparative study into changes in the world of literature that takes these into account is therefore called for. As well as providing cultural context and suggesting a point of departure from which to interpret the motivations of the young music enthusiasts, with more extensive and in-depth archival studies, this approach could also allow Western music to be positioned and interrogated as an analogous vehicle for self-expression in the late-Meiji period.  In an article in To-A no Hikari in 1911, which looks back on the Meiji era, Inoue Tetsujirō encouraged tolerance of different, even eccentric views for the sake of building a strong nation. He wrote: “The more individual powers, individual peculiarities and leanings are developed, the better for the nation as a whole….A new type of civilisation is about to be born.” Inoue endorsed the “…marriage of the Oriental and Occidental systems of civilisation,” in which Japan had not only copied, but had modified and would continue to “…modify many of the notions we have received from the West…,” adding that, although the process of assimilation of “mental food” would be a long one, it was bound to continue.22 One aspect of this “mental food” was Western music and the cultural practices associated with it, and its assimilation and spread was set to continue throughout, and well beyond the Meiji era. Through modification and adaptation, it entered everyday life where it affected and motivated members of a younger generation at the end of the period, becoming for them a means of expressing emotion and finding a place in the world.  In the introduction to this study, a question was posed. How and why was it that Japan came to fully embrace Western music in the 20th century and eventually become a significant centre of artistic creation and consumption in the world of Western music? This  20 By Futabatei Shimei 二葉亭 四迷 (1864-1909) and published between 1887 and 1889.  21 By Tayama Katai 田山花袋 (1871-1930) and published in 1907. 22 Japan Mail Office, JWM, June 17, 1911, 748.   242  outcome is all the more surprising given that, when the Japanese somewhat reluctantly opened to Western powers in the mid-19th century, a chasm existed in musical sensibilities. This study has taken a novel approach to addressing this question. It has related the history of an informal, voluntary process of adoption and spread of Western music. Making use of first-hand accounts, it has shown how music impacted the lives of individuals across a wide spectrum of society. Each responded to the opportunities presented by this new form of culture to achieve different objectives, and the sum total of their actions eventually led to a broader acceptance of the art form. A crucial part of the history was the development of the musical instrument business led by companies such as Jūjiya Gakkiten. The commercial activities of this shop enabled Western music to become more accessible and infiltrate the daily lives of widening sectors of Japanese society. The Japanese met this new aspect of Western material culture in a spirit of experimentation and play, which reflected the zeitgeist of the mid- to late-Meiji period.  It is hoped that this wide-ranging study will encourage future research and that academics across a variety of disciplines will explore in greater depth some of the topics and frameworks which have been introduced. As mentioned earlier, the potential for future work is not limited to historians of Japan, nor those concerned primarily with music. 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Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990.  Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E. Sound Diplomacy: Music and Emotions in Transatlantic Relations, 1850-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.  Gienow-Hecht, Jessica C. E.. Music and International History in the Twentieth Century. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2015. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9781782385011.    254   Gillinson, Clive, and Jonathan Vaughan. “The Life of an Orchestral Musician.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Orchestra, edited by Colin Lawson, 194-202. Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.  Gluck, Carol. “The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now.” The American Historical Review 116, no. 3 (2011): 676-687. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23308221.  Gluck, Carol. Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780691232676.  Gordon, Andrew. Fabricating Consumers: The Sewing Machine in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1525/9780520950313.  Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. International third edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.  Gotō, Nobuko. Yamada Kōsaku: Tsukuru no de wa naku Umu [Yamada Kōsaku: Not Create, Give Birth to]. Kyōto: Mineruva Shobō, 2014.  Guttmann, Allen. “Targeting Modernity: Archery and the Modernization of Japan,” Sport History Review 35, no. 1 (2004): 20-31. https://doi.org/10.1123/shr.35.1.20.  Han, Eric C.. “‘Tragedy in China-Town’: Murder, Civilization, and the End of Extraterritoriality in Yokohama.” The Journal of Japanese Studies 39, no. 2 (2013): 247-270. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24243133.  Han, Eric C., and Harvard University Asia Center. Rise of a Japanese Chinatown: Yokohama, 1894-1972. 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Hellyer, Robert, and Harald Fuess (eds.). The Meiji Restoration: Japan as a Global Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/9781108775762.  Hellyer, Robert. Green with Milk and Sugar: When Japan Filled America’s Tea Cups. New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2021. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.7312/hell19910.  Hendry, Joy, and Massimo Raveri (eds.). Japan at Play: The Ludic and the Logic of Power. London: Routledge, 2002.  Herd, Judith Ann. “Western-influenced ‘classical’ music in Japan.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music, edited by Alison McQueen Tokita, and David W. Hughes, 363-381. London: Routledge, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315172354.  Hirano, Masahiro. “Shikokin.” In Seizō Ganso Yokohama Orugan Piano Monogatari [Manufacturing Pioneers – The Story of Organs and Pianos in Yokohama], edited by Yokohama-shi Rekishi Hakubutsukan. 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Howe, Sondra Wieland. “The Role of Women in the Introduction of Western Music in Japan.” The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education 16, no. 2 (1995): 81-97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40214860.  Howe, Sondra Wieland. Luther Whiting Mason, International Music Educator. Warren, Mich: Harmonie Park Press,1997.  Howell, David L.. Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1525/9780520930872.  Howes, John F.. “CHAPTER X. Japanese Christians and American Missionaries.” In Changing Japanese Attitudes Toward Modernization, edited by Marius B. Jansen, 329-368. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9781400875672-011.  Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of Play-Element in Culture. London: Routledge, 2013. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315824161.  257   Ikegami, Eiko. “Waiting for the Flying Fish to Leap: Revisiting the Values and Individuality of Tokugawa People as Practiced.” In Values, Identity, and Equality in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japan, edited by James E. Ketelaar, Yasunori Kojima, and Peter Nosco, 29-50. Boston: BRILL, 2015. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=4003957.  Inoue, Satsu. “Meijiki Nihon no Hakurenkai ni okeru Yōgakki - Suzuki Vaiorin no Jirei wo Chūshin ni” [Western Musical Instruments at Japan’s Meiji-era Expos - A Case Study Focusing on the Suzuki Violin]. Aichi Kenritsu Geijutsudaigaku Kiyō = The Bulletin of Aichi University of the Arts, no. 40 (2010): 111-123.  Ion, Hamish. American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi, and Japan, 1859-73. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=3412736.   Ishii, Kendō. Meiji Jibutsu Kigen, 3 [Source of Meiji Affairs, Volume 3]. Tōkyō: Chikuma Shobō, 1997.   Jackson, Jeffrey H., and Stanley C. Pelkey (eds.). Music and History: Bridging the Disciplines. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.  Jansen, Marius B. Japan and Its World: Two Centuries of Change. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv25wxcm9.  Jansen, Marius B. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5, The Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521223560.  Jansen, Marius B.. The Making of Modern Japan. Cambridge, MA and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2002. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.4159/9780674039100.  Johnson, Steven. Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World. London: Macmillan, 2017.   258   Johnson-Williams, Erin. “Re-Examining the Academy: Music Institutions and Empire in Nineteenth Century London.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2015. https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/re-examining-academy-music-institutions-empire/docview/1763814761/se-2.  Jones, Mark Alan. “Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth -Century Japan.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2001. https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/children-as-treasures-childhood-middle-class/docview/304690117/se-2.  Kaneko, Atsuko. “Shikōkin no Rekishi” [The History of the Shikōkin], Ochanomizu Gakuronshū/Ochanomizu Ongaku Kenkyūkai (2006): 253-266.  Kataoka, Yūko. Hara Taneaki no Kenkyū: Shōgai to Jigyō [A Study of Hara Taneaki: Life and Work]. Nishinomiya: Kansai Gakuin Daigaku Shuppankai, 2011.  Kelly Lee, Riley. “Ho U vs. Do Re Mi: The Technology of Notation Systems and Implications of Change in the Shakuhachi Tradition of Japan.” Asian Music 19, no. 2 (Spring 1988): 71-81. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/fu-ho-u-vs-do-re-mi-technology-notation-systems/docview/740730927/se-2. Kinmonth, Earl H.. The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought: From Samurai to Salary Man. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.  Kowalczyk, Beata M.. “‘…in Japan, We Are Just Imitating the “Real” Thing…’. (Re)Doing Racialized Authentic Self in Classical Music.” Gender, Work, and Organization 30, no. 4 (2023): 1468-1483. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.13024.  Koyama, Noboru. Hatenkō “Meiji Ryūgakusei” Retsuden: Daiei Teikoku ni Mananda Hitobito [Unprecedented Biographies of Meiji Overseas Students: People Who Studied in the British Empire]. Tōkyō: Kōdansha, 1999.  Lee, Angela Hao-Chun. “The Influence of Governmental Control and Early Christian Missionaries on Music Education of Aborigines in Taiwan.” British Journal of Music Education 23, no. 2 (2006): 205-216. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265051706006930. 259   Linden, Bob van der. “Non-Western National Music and Empire in Global History: Interactions, Uniformities, and Comparisons.” Journal of Global History 10, no. 3 (2015): 431-456. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S1740022815000212.  Lucken, Michael. Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryusei to Miyazaki Hayao. New York Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press, 2016. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.7312/luck17292.  Lukminaite, Simona. “Developments in Female Education of Meiji Japan as Seen from Jogaku Zasshi S Editorials by Iwamoto Yoshiharu.” Analele Universitatii Crestine Dimitrie Cantemir. Seria Stiintele Limbii, Literaturii Si Didactica Predarii, no. 1 (2015): 9-22.  Maema, Takanori, and Yūichi Iwano. Nihon no Piano Hyakunen: Pianozukuri ni Kaketa Hitobito [One Hundred Years of the Piano in Japan: the People Involved in making the Piano]. Tōkyō: Sōshisha, 2001.  Malm, William P.. “CHAPTER VII. The Modern Music of Meiji Japan.” In Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture, edited by Donald H. Shively, 257-300. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9781400869015-012.  Markow, Robert. “The wonder of Tokyo and beyond: classical music, opera and dance in Japan.” bachtrack, December 2, 2019. https://bachtrack.com/feature-classical-music-in-japan-december-2019/.   Markow, Robert. “Tokyo’s Big Eight Orchestras Flash Bigtime Qualities.” Classical Voice North America, October 21, 2015. https://classicalvoiceamerica.org/2015/10/21/japanese-orchestras-2015/.  Masumoto, Masahiko. Yokohama Gēte Za: Meiji Taishō no Seiyō Gekijō [The Yokohama Gaiety Theatre: Meiji and Taishō Western Theatre]. Yokohama: Iwasaki Hakubutsukan Gēte Zakinen Shuppankyoku, 1986.    260   Matsumoto, Yūjirō. Meiji no Gakki Seizōsha Monogatari: Nishikawa Torakichi, Matsumoto Shinkichi [The Story of the Meiji Instrument Manufacturers, Nishikawa Torakichi, Matsumoto Shinkichi]. Tōkyō: Sōeisha, 1997.  Matsumura, Chikako. “Meijiki no Karaoke, Shikōkin (4) – Hanbaigen, Ginza Jūjiya (1)” [The Karaoke of the Meiji Period, the Shikōkin - Source of Sales, Ginza Jujiya (1)]. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Nenpō Kiyō = The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts Annual Report, Bulletin. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Hen (2014): 44-48.   Matsumura, Chikako. “Meijiki no Karaoke, Shikōkin (5) – Hanbaigen, Ginza Jūjiya (2)” [The Karaoke of the Meiji Period, the Shikōkin - Source of Sales, Ginza Jujiya (2)]. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Nenpō Kiyō = The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts Annual Report, Bulletin. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Hen (2015): 36-40.   Matsumura, Chikako. “Meijiki no Karaoke, Shikōkin (6) – Naikoku Kangyō Hakurankai no Shuppin (1)” [The Karaoke of the Meiji Period, the Shikōkin - Exhibits at Domestic Business Promotion Expositions (1)]. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Nenpō Kiyō = The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts Annual Report, Bulletin. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Hen (2016): 36-40.   Matsumura, Chikako. “Meijiki no Karaoke, Shikōkin (6) – Naikoku Kangyō Hakurankai no Shuppin (2)” [The Karaoke of the Meiji Period, the Shikōkin - Exhibits at Domestic Business Promotion Expositions (2)]. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Nenpō Kiyō = The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts Annual Report, Bulletin. Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Daigaku Bijutsukan Hen (2017): 46-51.   May, Elizabeth. The Influence of the Meiji Period on Japanese Children’s Music. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.  McNabb, David E.. Commerce and Industry in the Meiji Period. In A Comparative History of Commerce and Industry, Volume II, 137-157. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1057/9781137503305_9.    261   Mehl, Margaret. “European Art Music and Its Role in the Cultural Interaction between Japan and the East Asian Continent in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia 7, no. 1 (2016): 67-81. https://doi.org/10.1515/jciea-2016-070106.   Mehl, Margaret. “A Man’s Job? The Kôda Sisters, Violin Playing, and Gender Stereotypes in the Introduction of Western Music in Japan,” Women’s History Review 21, no. 1 (2012), 101-120. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2012.645675.  Mehl, Margaret. “Between the Global, the National and the Local in Japan: Two Musical Pioneers from Sendai.” Itinerario 41, no. 2 (2017): 305-325. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S0165115317000389.  Mehl, Margaret. “Japan’s Early Twentieth-Century Violin Boom.” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 7, no. 1 (2010): 23-43. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479409800001130.  Mehl, Margaret. “Western Art Music in Japan: A Success Story?” Nineteenth-Century Music Review 10, no. 2 (2013): 211-222. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1017/S1479409813000232.  Mehl, Margaret. Not by Love Alone: The Violin in Japan, 1850-2010. Copenhagen: The Sound Book Press, 2014.  Meiji Gakuin University. “A comrade-in-arms of Yae Yamamoto at Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle.” Accessed August 5, 2024. https://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/en/about/why/ibuka/.  Mestyan, Adam. “Power and Music in Cairo: Azbakiyya.” Urban History 40, no. 4 (2013): 681-705. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926813000229.  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Aberdeen: Hong Kong University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1w1vmsb.6.  Nenzi, Laura. The Chaos and Cosmos of Kurosawa Tokiko: One Woman’s Transit from Tokugawa to Meiji Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2015. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780824853891.  Nikolić, Sanela. “Five Claims for Global Musicology.” Acta Musicologica 93, no. 2 (2021): 219-235, 238-239. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/five-claims-global-musicology/docview/2623611786/se-2.  Nimura, Janice P.. Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back. First edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.  Nish, Ian. The Iwakura Mission in America and Europe: A New Assessment. Richmond: Japan Library, 1998. 264   Nitobe, Inazo Ota, and Institute of Pacific Relations Japanese Council. Western Influences in Modern Japan: A Series of Papers on Cultural Relations. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1931.  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Ravina, Mark. To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World History. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.  Rice, William Richard. “Sustaining Musical Identity of the Ichigenkin: Negotiating Performance, Composition and Aesthetics of Japan's One-String Zither of the Seikyodo Ichigenkin School.” Masters diss., University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2021. https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/sustaining-musical-identity-em-ichigenkin/docview/2592328236/se-2.  Saitō, Michiko. Hani Motoko: Shōgai to Shisō [Hani Motoko: Life and Thoughts]. Tokyo, Domesu Shuppan, 1988.  Sakai, Aya. “The Hybridization of Ideas on Public Parks: Introduction of Western Thought and Practice into Nineteenth-Century Japan.” Planning Perspectives 26, no. 3 (2011): 347-371. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/02665433.2011.575555.  Sand, Jordan. House and Home In Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005. https://hdl-handle-net.eux.idm.oclc.org/2027/heb05898.0001.001.   Sano, Hitomi. “Takemitsu Tōru and the Pre-war ‘Folk Style’ Composers, Kiyose Yasuji, Hayasaka Fumio and the Perception of ‘Japanese-style Works’.” Kobe Daigaku Hyōgen Bunka Kenkyū 10, no. 2 (2011): 171-183. https://doi.org/10.24546/81002917. 267   Satō, Dōshin. Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of Beauty / Dōshin Satō ; Translated by Hiroshi Nara. Translated by Hiroshi Nara. Los Angeles, California: Getty Research Institute, 2011.  Sawada, Janine Anderson. Practical Pursuits: Religion, Politics, and Personal Cultivation in Nineteenth-Century Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004.  Scheiner, Irwin. Christian Converts and Social Protests in Meiji Japan. Michigan Classics in Japanese Studies. [N.p.]: U of M Center For Japanese Studies, 2020. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=2584680&site=ehost-live.   Schodt, Frederik L.. Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan--and Japan to the West. Berkeley CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2012. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=904663.  Seat, Karen. “Mission Schools and Education for Women.” In Handbook of Christianity in Japan, edited by Mark Mullins, 321-342. Boston: BRILL, 2003. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ed/detail.action?docID=253624.   Sheppard, William Anthony. Extreme Exoticism: Japan in the American Musical Imagination. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190072704.001.0001.  Shinoda, Kōzō. Ginza Hyakuwa [Essays on Ginza]. Tōkyō: Okakura Shobō, 1937.  Shively, Donald H.. Tradition and Modernization in Japanese Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. https://doi-org.eux.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9781400869015.  Siniawer, Eiko Maruko. 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