Author, Researcher and Lecturer with a Passion for History, Music and Japan
The other day, during a discussion of my teaching, a colleague in religious studies said to me, ‘well a course on music in Japan is too specialized’, or something to that effect. WHY, I ask, should music ‘specialized’ than, for example, religion? I would contend that, on the whole, most…
Even after finishing Not by Love Alone, I still wonder at the rapid spread of Western music in 19th– and early 20th-century Japan. Like others writing about the history of Western music in Japan, I made much of the Japanese pioneers who studied in the West or had Western teachers….
Established in 1895 by Shikama Totsuji 四竈訥治(訥堂、1853 – 1928), this youth band was one of the first of its kind. A few years later several department stores founded youth bands. They performed publicly and were important for making Western music more widely heard. The following year Shikama Totsuji moved back…