Shaped by Japanese Music: Kikuoka Hiroaki and Nagauta Shamisen in Tokyo

276 Pages·2004·6.47 MB·English

by  Jay Davis Keister

CURRENT RESEARCH IN
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
Edited by
Jennifer C.Post
Middlebury College
A ROUTLEDGE SERIES
CURRENT RESEARCH IN
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY

JENNIFER C.POST, General Editor
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SHAPED BY JAPANESE MUSIC
Kikuoka Hiroaki and Nagauta Shamisen in Tokyo
Jay Keister

ROUTLEDGE
New York & London
Published in 2004 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, New York 10001
Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis
or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
http://www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk/.”
Copyright © 2004 by Taylor and Francis, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
Lyrics by Tangetsu Ishikawa used by permission of JASRAC, license no. 0375009–301.
Copyright © 2001 by Tangetsu Ishikawa.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Keister, Jay. Shaped by Japanese music:
nagauta shamisen in Tokyo/Jay Keister. p. cm.—(Current research in ethnomusicology; v. 10)
Glossary: p. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 0-415-96972-7 (hardcover:
alk. paper) 1. Shamisen music—History and criticism. 2. Nagauta—History and criticism. 3.
Kikuoka, Hiroaki, 1928–1999. 4. Music—Japan—Tokyo—History and criticism. I. Title, II.
Series. ML1015.S52K44 2004 781.62′956—dc22 2003021588
ISBN 0-203-49655-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-54865-5 (Adobe e-Reader Format)
ISBN 0-415-96972-7 (Print Edition)
This book is dedicated to the memory of Kikuoka Hiroaki (1927–1999), who taught me
about purity through music, to my parents, John S. (1928–1999) and Josephine J., who
taught me about harmony through tolerance, and to my wife, Mami, who taught me
about nature through love.
Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: The Human Life in the Music 1
Chapter One A Career in Nagauta: Kikuoka Hiroaki 12
Chapter Two Learning Nagauta: An Ethnographic Account of Teacher- 30

Student Relationships
ChapterThree Nagauta as Social Institution: The Shaping Forces of Form 63
Chapter Four Nagauta as Cultural Document: The Shaping of Sukeroku 83
Chapter Five The Shape of Nagauta in the Twentieth Century: Two 101

Compositions by Kikuoka
Conclusion: Shaped by Japanese Music 129

Appendix A Transcription: Sukeroku 138
Appendix B Transcription: Yuki Musume 159
Appendix C Transcription: Sakura Emaki 187
Notes 246
Bibliography 253
Index and Glossary 259
Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the following people for helping, either directly or indirectly, to make this
book possible:
Rees Archibald, Baba Kazuo, Elaine Barkin, Jane Batson, Amy Catlin, Lindsay Clare,
Sue DeVale, Kelly Foreman, Craig Foster, Jonathan Fraser, Fujita Shinzuo, Fukushima
Kazuo, Robert Garfias, Hanna Naoki, Hayashi Noriko, Denise Henry, Douglas Hollan,
Itasaka Mami, Mr. and Mrs. Itasaka Miki, Katada Kikuyu, Katada Kikusa, John and
Josephine Keister, Kikuoka Hiroaki, Kineya Rokuaya, Kineya Yusuke, Kin-san and
family, Koizumi Yoshimi, Steve Loza, John Lytton, Grace M, William Malm, Rebecca
Maloy, Mochizuki Tahachi, Alan Nagamoto, Nishimura Makoto, Okazaki Yoshiko, Ochi
Yoshino, Herman Ooms, Oshio Satomi, Curt Patterson, Janet Pocorobba, Ali Jihad Racy,
Helen Rees, Tim Rice, Brenda Romero, Wes Savick, Sugiura Kazuko, Terauchi Naoko,
Togi Suenobu, Tokumaru Yoshihiko, Yaiko-san, Yamazaki Kazue, Yokoyama Takako,
Ikuko Yuge, Yuriko, Eriko, Tomoko and Noriko.
I would also like to thank the UCLA Center for Japanese Studies, the UCLA Center
for Pacific Rim Studies, and the Japan Foundation for their support.
Introduction: The Human Life in the Music

ADVICE TO THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGIST: “STUDY THE
HUMAN LIFE IN THE MUSIC”
From March 1997 to December 1998, I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to
study nagauta music in Tokyo with Kikuoka Hiroaki, a well-known, high-ranking,
professional performer, composer, and founder of a music society who passed away in
January 1999. Although I made it clear to him from the beginning my position as a
researcher of ethnomusicology and that my basic goal was to learn about the current
practice of nagauta, I was immediately taken in by Kikuoka as a serious student of the
music through applied lessons. Being one of Kikuoka’s students not only made us both
more comfortable in our relationship, but gave me the opportunity to learn the detailed
nuances of nagauta singing that can best be learned through experiencing direct one-on-
one study with a teacher. But this student-teacher relationship that is so central to
Japanese performing arts allowed me to learn more than just musical techniques first-
hand. Kikuoka shared with me his personal philosophies about music and life that were a
constant source of inspiration to me during a difficult period of living in Japan. As is
common for many Japanese teachers known by the honorable term of sensei, Kikuoka
advised me on a wide range of matters, as a father might advise a son.
The one piece of advice from Kikuoka that had the greatest impact on my research in
ethnomusicology was directed not only to me, but to ethnomusicologists in general: “If
ethnomusicologists want to study the music,” he said, “they should study the human life
in the music.” This advice was the key to understanding how this music, originating in
the seventeenth century as accompaniment to kabuki, continues to thrive today in modern
Japan. The heart of nagauta music is not to be found in the extensive repertoire of
compositions surviving today in books of notation or preserved on CD recordings, but is
embodied in individual performers such as Kikuoka who are lifelong carriers of the
tradition, transmitting their experience of the music to students directly through social
interaction. Ethnomusicologists should study the human life in music because in Japanese
traditional music, as in other traditional arts of East Asia, value is placed less on the
external artistic product than it is on the perfection of skills and the mastery of the
principles of the genre by individuals.1 This helps explain why acclaimed master
musicians of nagauta such as Kikuoka, and his teacher, Yamada Shōtarō,2 often spoke of
having the ability to discern the character and feelings of individual players solely
through listening to their performance of the music. Nagauta is more than just a
repertoire of songs. It is an artistic process or path to be discovered and experienced by
Shaped by Japanese music 2
the individual musician. “Because musicians create music from life,” Kikuoka told me,
“music is not first, life is first.”
RESEARCH ON NAGAUTA AND THE PRACTICE OF
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
Kikuoka’s advice to me made me realize the value of such an approach for studying
Japanese traditional music and for researching nagauta music in particular, considering
the literature on the subject. As one of the main genres of music for the shamisen (skin-
covered, three-stringed, plucked lute), nagauta has been the subject of research by both
Japanese and Western scholars. The most extensive research of nagauta in Japanese is by
Asakawa who explains the music’s form, poetic structure and history from its origins in
the seventeenth century to the present day, including an assessment of how this
traditional music is faring in modern Japan and advice for the future (see Asakawa 1974).
Asakawa’s most substantial work is his detailed catalog and explanation of the repertoire,
Nagauta meikyoku yosetsu [an explanation of famous nagauta pieces] (1991). Detailed
analysis of melodic phrases and tonal structure in nagauta has been done by Kakinoki
(1978, 1975) and Oshio (1999, 1993). Older works by Machida (1924) and Kineya
(1932) provide useful descriptions of the music and musicians during the early part of the
twentieth century. In a more popular vein is work by Ikeda (2002) that emphasizes an
appreciation of the repertoire through the stories and places evoked in the music. Nagauta
research in English has been largely the domain of one ethnomusicologist, William
Malm, who has published extensively on the subject. Malm’s early research consisted of
a history of the genre and analysis of musical form (Malm 1963). His later research of
nagauta included an analysis of techniques of word painting (Malm 1978), the
development of concert nagauta in the nineteenth century (Malm 1994), and an analysis
of the influential musician and composer Yamada Shōtarō (Malm 1999).3 His book, Six
Hidden Views of Japanese Music (1986), features chapters about the absorption of the
music of nō drama and folk festivals into nagauta, as well as the flexibility of
interpretation of pieces by nagauta performers.
The historical research and musical analyses of nagauta have proven to be invaluable
sources for my own study of nagauta music and have made tremendous contributions to
the large body of literature on Japanese traditional music. Japanese traditional music in
general has been extremely well documented, as evidenced in the sheer volume of
historical documents and research available in Japanese as well as the growing body of
literature in English (see surveys by Simeda 2002, Nelson 2002, and Hughes 1993).
Hughes demonstrates that the amount of detailed, descriptive studies that have been done
provides numerous possibilities for future research in Japanese music and cites the need
for further research of a broad range of topics, including comparative analysis between
schools of music, oral mnemonic systems of learning, the iemoto (household head)
system of transmission in the arts, and aesthetics that are prevalent throughout Japanese
music genres (1993). What is evident in reviewing the literature is that although Japanese
music has been well documented in terms of its history, form, theory, and performance
practice using methodologies commonly associated with historical musicology, Japanese
music has not been sufficiently analyzed as an aspect of Japanese culture using