11. The World in Sendai

Nevertheless, it is really thanks to her [Kate Hansen] that we can savour such complex harmonies even here in the back and beyond of Tohoku. If it were not for her, this gathering would probably have amounted to nothing.1

Sendai is an extraordinary place; a place where really serious concerts are held.²

Before recorded music became widely available, music could only be heard through live performances, and concerts represented an important vehicle for disseminating Western music, as well as certain indigenous genres. But the public concert, a modern institution imported from the West, did more than that. We might look upon it as a ‘creative space’ where the people of Sendai encountered the wider world.3 While the literal space of the concert is a confined venue, the ‘creative space’ has no fixed boundaries. Within it, at a particular historical moment, people and their ideas interact, and all sides of the encounter are affected, with unpredictable outcomes. The character of the interactions is not necessarily defined by a particular power structure, or by notions of original and copy; the foreign and the indigenous mix and overlap in complex ways.4 Concerts thus represented a space in which music was performed and listened to. Music, however is always ‘music with’, and the effects of staging or attending concerts do not result exclusively from the music itself.⁵

Most of the concerts examined in this chapter were staged in schools by students and teachers and with the aim of presenting achievements in the mastery of (chiefly Western) music and of educating the local public. Arguably, concerts did more than that: they linked the local people to the wider world, and they did so in three ways. First, the concerts were an occasion for direct encounters between the Japanese organizers, performers, and listeners with members of the foreign population, particularly the teachers at the missionary schools. Second, a significant part of the repertoire performed and listened to consisted of works played and enjoyed worldwide. Third, many of the pieces performed evoked foreign places or past times; other worlds, in short, and thus had the potential to widen the horizons of the imagination of the listeners. Much has been said about the nation as an imagined community. The world of nations and the global community too are imaginary constructs, as is the notion of modernity. Although the commonalities of modernity include major political, social, and economic changes,6 another defining characteristic is the idea of progress and the consciousness of a major rupture with the past and traditional ways of life.⁷ In the face of the experience of loss that results from this rupture, ‘music becomes a site of both nostalgia and anticipation’.8 The concerts enabled participants, whether performers or audience, to experience themselves as part of the global community and to participate in ‘a globally shared culture of modernity’.⁹

By the early twentieth century, concerts featuring exclusively or predominantly Western music were becoming a fixture of cultural life in Sendai. Significantly, the early concerts featured predominantly Japanese or blended (wayō setchū) music. The concert as an institution thus predated the public performance of Western music. In the course of the 1920s, visiting artists from overseas began to perform in Sendai, while the impact of gramophone recordings and radio broadcasts made itself felt. Recordings separated the performer from the listener. They could and did profoundly change the experience of listening to a live performance; increasingly, the works performed at the concerts were already familiar to the audience from listening to recordings. Thus the period examined in this chapter, while largely determined by the availability of concert programmes in Ongakukai, represents a particular, transitional, historical moment: a time when a measure of familiarity with certain kinds of Western music, namely shōka and music played by bands, had been acquired, but the range of music performed was limited and the standard of performance modest.

Admittedly, we are on uncertain ground for several reasons. Ongakukai was published between January 1908 and November 1923 and reported on concerts held in Sendai between 26 October 1907 and 19 February 1921: forty-five in all, between two and six for each year.10 The published programmes (most reports included a programme) represent but a fraction of the concerts held in Sendai. The number of unreported concerts is impossible to tell, although information from local newspapers and other sources might fill some of the gaps.¹¹ Some reports included a general characterization of the music scene. For example, in the April 1908 issue, it was reported that there were fewer concerts than in the previous year: while four to five concerts were held between January and March in 1907, in the current year the only event that could be called a concert was the seventeenth concert of the Second High School.¹² Whether or not a report was published presumably depended on the initiative of individuals and, perhaps, the number of items submitted to Ongakukai for publication from sources throughout the country. Programmes were published after the event, but may well have been prepared in haste and without confirming details with the performers, which would account for the lack of detail or the remark ‘to be determined’. Individual items, moreover, may well have been swapped around or changed on the day. As an exact record of any given concert, programmes may therefore not always be reliable, but they do give us an idea of overall trends.

Identifying individual items on the programmes represents another challenge. Even the idea of an exact specification of the pieces to be performed at a given event may well have seemed outlandish at the time, and the programmes examined here rarely provide the details we expect from concert programmes today. Typically, they describe the items as instrumental (naming the instrument or instruments) or vocal; as solos, ensembles (duet, trio etc.), ‘orchestra’, or chorus. It is not always clear whether the groups sang or played in unison or in different parts; in some programmes, performances of part songs are explicitly described as such. The title of the piece performed follows, and sometimes the name of a composer. Titles were generally given in transliteration or in Japanese translation. Transliteration was not standardized and the Japanese script does not allow accurate representation of foreign names. With some titles, it can be anybody’s guess what language was transliterated.

Japanese titles are no less ambiguous. In some cases we cannot even be sure whether the title represents a work from the Western repertoire or a Japanese piece, traditional or contemporary. ‘Tsuki’ (moon), for example, can be the title of a koto piece or of any number of shōka. The tunes of Western songs, both folk songs and art songs, were often given lyrics that had nothing to do with the original ones, such as Schumann’s Zigeunerleben, which morphed into Satsuma-gata, before the German lyrics were translated.13 There are (at least) three songs with the title Ōtōnomiya (an alternative name for the Kamakura Shrine), two of them sung to the tune of Friedrich Silcher’s song, Der alte Barbarossa; the third one a shōka published by the Ministry of Education. For some songs, the foreign lyrics were translated more than once. The same song could appear under different titles, which may reflect the source of the notated music.¹⁴ For instrumental pieces, nondescript titles like ‘Andante’ may well designate practice pieces from instrumental tutors.

Given all these uncertainties, some of the identifications of programme items cited here are merely educated guesses.¹⁵ Because of this and the limited number of sample programmes, no attempt at statistical analysis is made here. As an indication of general trends, however, the forty-odd programmes of varying detail and accuracy, covering the period from autumn 1907 until February 1921, do provide valuable evidence of musical activities at the grassroots level.

Even if we assume that the programmes are representative and give a fair indication of what was performed, they do not tell us how the performances were received. The audiences are difficult to identify, but it seems safe to conclude that many of them would have been associated with the performers, such as family, friends, or fellow students. We have limited information about entrance fees. Sometimes fees are mentioned in a way that suggests that they were the exception rather than the rule. Many if not most of the concerts held in schools may have been free. We rarely receive an indication of what Japanese listeners actually experienced when they listened to what was performed. Published reviews are not always telling. One detailed review of a concert by the Second High School (cited in this chapter) appears to be penned by the kind of arrogant man characterized by Kate Hansen in Musical Consciousness. If he is to be believed, the audience at the concert had little if any appreciation for art music.

Concerts were organized by different actors, most of them Japanese and associated with one of Sendai’s many schools, which also provided the venue for the majority of concerts. Other organizers included local associations, and venues included churches and the Sendai-za theatre. Some of the concerts were joint efforts involving several groups. Foreign actors were prominent in the concerts organized at the Second High School, as well as at the mission schools. Most of the local performers were teachers and students. Most of the invited performers were associated with the Tokyo Academy of Music. Among the public schools, the Second High School is represented with the highest number of concerts (nine), followed by Miyagi Prefecture Normal School (eight).16 Of the private institutions, Tōhoku Ongakuin led with nine concerts, followed by Miyagi College (five). Other schools were represented with one to three concerts, while eight concerts were staged by various associations.

An exception is a programme of a concert organized by the Association for Native Japanese Music (Kokufū Ongaku Kai) that took place on 8 April 1908.17 The concert consisted of a daytime and an evening section, with fourteen and twelve items respectively.¹⁸ The programme of the evening section ran as follows:

1. Tsuyugoromo (A Cloak of Dewdrops) (2 koto, 1 sangen)
2. Nihon nishiki (Japan Brocade)19 (3 koto, 2 sangen)
3. Sue no chigiri (Pledge of Eternal Fidelity) (2 koto, 1 sangen)
4. Ume no ukihashi (The Bridge of Dreams) (3 koto, 1 sangen)
5. Chidori (no) kyoku (Song of the Plovers) (3 koto)
6. Hagi no tsuyu (Dew on the Bush Clover) (koto, sangen, shakuhachi)
7. Dewa no kyoku (Song from Dewa Province) (3 koto)
8. Sato no akatsuki (Daybreak in the Village) (sangen, shakuhachi)
9. Miyagi (no) kyoku (Song from Miyagi) (2 koto, sangen)
10. Shin aoyagi (New Song of the Green Willow) (koto, sangen, shakuhachi)
11. Sanzan/Mitsuyama20 (koto, sangen)
12. Shōchikubai (Pine, Bamboo, and Plum) (koto, sangen, shakuhachi)

Most if not all the pieces appear to be in the jiuta genre, originally a shamisen genre and adopted by Ikuta Kengyō (1656–1715), founder of the Ikuta-school of koto music. 21 He developed jiuta into a chiefly instrumental genre (tegotomono), often played by ensembles, including koto and shamisen (usually called sangen in this context). Later, the sankyoku ensemble, consisting of koto, shamisen, and kokyū (bowed lute) or shakuhachi became common.22 Ikuta jiuta is an example of a regional style (originating from the Kansai region) that attained nationwide currency from the late nineteenth century. Miyagi no kyoku was composed by Yamashita Shōkin (1848–1918). Another concert of predominantly koto and shamisen music took place on 30 August 1915 at the Sakuragaoka Public Hall and featured well-known performers from Tokyo.23

Judging from the programmes in Ongakukai, Japanese and blended music were most often performed in concerts at the private Tōhoku Ongakuin (Tohoku Music Academy).

Tōhoku Ongakuin

Headed by Maedako Shinkin (1861?–1929), Tōhoku Ongakuin (Tohoku Academy of Music) was exceptional: a large private music studio that regularly organized concerts. As a major player in the dissemination of Western music it predated the Second High School, the other major organizer of concerts (see Chapter 9). Its main importance may well have been as an institution that trained teachers rather than as an organizer of concerts, but its outreach organization, Kyōseikai, as well as the descriptions, ‘Spring concert’ and ‘Autumn concert’, suggests that public concerts were an integral part of the Academy’s activities and that the nine concerts reported in Ongakukai represent a mere fraction of the concerts actually held. Unlike the concerts at the Second High School, which depended on the initiative (or lack thereof) of the students at any given time, the Tōhoku Ongakuin remained in the hands of Maedako Shinkin, who was, moreover, ably supported by family members, particularly his daughter Haruko, who would have been at least in her teens by 1908 and whose name features in every concert.24 Her sister Nobuko graduated from the Music College of the East (Tōyō Ongaku Gakkō) in March 1917.25 Shinkin’s son Wataru, who died in Tokyo in 1932 at age thirty-five, may well have studied music in Tokyo, like his sister: some of the violin pieces he reportedly performed are fairly advanced.26 Otherwise not much is known about the family.

In contrast to the Second High School, Maedako Shinkin’s academy did not rely on foreign support: the performers, besides Shinkin himself and members of his family, were (presumably) his students and, on occasion, guest performers. Another marked difference from most of the concerts organized by schools was the high number of blended (wayō setchū) performances including guest performers who played Japanese instruments.

Blended performances, together with a few pieces played exclusively on Japanese instruments, featured prominently in the two concert programmes in 1912. The ‘Twenty-first commemorative concert’27 on 20 October 1912, in which a total of twenty-four items were performed, included seven ensemble pieces played on the violin, koto, shamisen, and shakuhachi in various combinations, and a Japanese piece performed as an organ solo:

3. One koto, two shamisen, three violins (title not specified)

6. Organ solo – Echigo jishi (Echigo lion dance)

7. Shakuhachi, violin, shamisen: Nagauta Echigo jishi²⁸

9. Shamisen, violin – Harusame (Spring rain)²⁹

13. Shakuhachi, two violins (or violin and koto) – Shōjō tsuru
(The crane on the pine tree)³⁰

17. Shakuhachi, shamisen, violin – Chidori (Plovers)³¹

20. Violin and shamisen – Kokaji (The swordsmith)³²

23. Koto, shakuhachi, violin – Hagi no tsuyu (Dew on the bush clover)³³

In addition, item 12, Haru no kyoku (Spring song)³⁴ performed with four violins may also have been a koto piece, although the title could conceivably describe a Western one. The Western music on the programme consisted of shōka, popular vocal or instrumental excerpts from operas, marches, salon pieces, and pieces with unspecific titles like ‘Andante’ or ‘Serenade’ and no composer named. The concert was special in that it featured a visiting shamisen player from the Kineya school (Kineya Rokukei), described as famous, who, as well as playing in the mixed ensemble items, performed two items in a duo with shakuhachi (15. Tamagawa, 22. Yachiyo jishi) and one with shamisen (19. Kanjinchō), as well as concluding the concert with an unspecified solo.

More typical, perhaps, was the programme of a concert on 3 November 1916. Although the Academy regularly held an autumn concert, the report in Ongakukai states that this particular one was held in celebration of the special holiday (investiture of the crown prince) and was attended by several hundred people.35 The programme was as follows:

1. Organ solo – Golden Dream³⁶
2. Two-part singing (unspecified) – Six members of youth group
3. Organ solo – Tsuki (Moon)³⁷
4. Organ and violin – Yūhō (Friend)
5. Organ solo – Tsuru kame (Crane and tortoise)³⁸
6. Shakuhachi, violin, sangen – Chidori (Plovers)
7. Shōka chorus – Tanoshiki wagaya (Our happy home)³⁹
8. Violin duo – Shukuten māchi (Celebratory march)
9. Violin and sangen – Haru no kyoku (Spring song)⁴⁰
10. Violin, organ – March
11. Shakuhachi, violin, sangen – Yūgao (Evening face)
12. Organ solo – Hail Columbia
13. Violin, koto, shakuhachi – Shin Takasago (New Takasago)
14. Mandolin solo (no piece named)
15. Violin, koto, shakuhachi – Aki no kyoku (Autumn song)
16. Violin solo – Largo
17. Koto, sangen – Ataka (probably Ataka no matsu/The Pines at Ataka, a nagauta)
18. Violin solo – Romance
19. Violin, koto, shakuhachi – Shōjō no tsuru (A crane in the pines, Yamada school)
20. Violin (solo)41
21. Violin duo – Romance
22. Violin, sangen, shakuhachi – Tamagawa
23. Violin solo – ‘Kosucherutora ni bu’⁴²

In later years, the proportion of blended items in the programmes seems to have declined, and the programme of the last concert reported in Ongakukai, which took place on 13 November 1920 in Sanbanchō Kumiai Church, contains none at all. The number of programmes is too small to conclude with certainty that this reflects a trend, but if so, this would parallel the general trend of the time (see Chapter 8). As in the previous example, most of the Western pieces named in the programmes are shōka, marches, and instrumental pieces, but, unusually, specific titles and the composer’s name are given for nearly all the items.⁴³ The programme was as follows (the performers, presumably all affiliated with the Academy, are only named for some items):

Part 1

1. Violin duet – Tsubame wa kaeru (The swallows fly home) –
   by Abt44
2. Male voices, 4-part – A. Good Night – by ‘Watkings’45;
   B. Tayutau kobune (The drifting small boat) – by Knight46
3. Violin trio – Sayogaku (serenade) – by Haydn
4. Violin quartet Mune yori mune e (From breast to breast/Heart to heart) – by Mozart
5. Baritone (tenor?) solo – Sayogaku – by Schubert47
6. Violin duet – Lovely Rose⁴⁸
7. Soprano solo – Subete o shireru kimi yori (From you who knows everything) – Mozart49
8. Piano duet – Sasayaki (Whisper) – by Gillet50
9. Violin solo Tanoshiki waga ya (Our happy home) variations – by Sousa51

Part 2

1. Mixed choir– Butō (Dance) – by ‘Shuyotto’52
2. Violin trio – From Opera, The Barber of Sevilla (sic; unspecified) – by Rossini
3. Organ solo – Happy Moments – by ‘Uaresu’⁵³
4. Violin quartet – Chor aus Euryanthe – by Weber⁵⁴
5. Female vocal duo – Tsukiyo – (Moonlit night) – by ‘Dēmusu’⁵⁵
6. Violin solo – Malaguena – by Sarasate
7. Violin duet – La paloma (Spanish serenade) – by Yradier56
8. Soprano solo – Ware wa samayou (I wander about) – by Gounod57
9. Mixed chorus – Yū no kyoku (Evening song)⁵⁸

The consistent inclusion of composers’ names might suggest a new awareness of the distinctiveness of the individual works, even if they were part of edited collections. There are fewer shōka than the previous concerts, and although most of the pieces can be described as fairly elementary, others, like Voi che sapete are more demanding, and Sarasate’s Malaguena (played by Maedako Shinkin’s son Wataru) is certainly well above beginners’ level.

That the Tohoku Academy of Music was still perceived as a major player in the Western music scene around 1920 is suggested by the fact that members of the Academy took part in the concert organized by students of Tohoku Imperial University on 1 May 1920.59

The Second High School

The music club at the Second High School was the most important organizer of concerts featuring predominantly Western music in the first years of the twentieth century. The number of concerts is, however, difficult to determine, and might have been lower than that of the concerts given by Tōhoku Ongakuin. The Shōshikai association’s magazine reported a total of eleven concerts before 1908, but reporting appears to have been irregular, particularly after 1908.60 Ongakukai reported nine concerts with programmes between 1908 and 1920. The irregularity both of concerts held and of reporting is presumably explained by the fact that the students’ level of initiative and activity varied from year to year; the spring concert in 1915, moreover, took place after an extended period of national mourning following the death of the Meiji emperor.⁶¹

While the members of the music club relied heavily on the participation of the foreign community, the extent of their involvement appears to have varied, and lessened over time. Relations with members of the foreign community may have been less close after the conclusion of the pioneering phase. With the gradual increase of music teaching in schools, new students entering the high school may well have felt more confident in their own abilities. Either way, just under six years after its first concert, the musical offerings and levels of competence in performance continued to be mixed. The concert on 31 October 1908, for example, included shōka, short instrumental solos, and two marches played by an ‘orchestra’. Besides foreigners, several Japanese women performed: Mrs Kobayashi was the wife of a professor at the school and may have trained at the Tokyo Academy of Music; the others were, presumably, students from other schools. A review of the concert, which according to Ongakukai attracted a large audience, was published in Shōshikai zasshi. The author, who called himself ‘Masao’, may have been an older student; at any rate a young man who prided himself on his superior knowledge and powers of appreciation.62 The programme was as follows:

Part 1

1. Orchestra – Gallop – Members
2. Piano – ‘to be determined’ – Miss Hansen63
3. Two-part singing – ‘Orubōrudo, uotchi’⁶⁴ – Miss Izumi Kyōko (with one more)
4. Harmonica – College March – A member
5. Shakuhachi solo – Kaze-ki no kyoku⁶⁵ – Mr Adachi Kochō
6. Violin duet – Andante (Gluck)⁶⁶ – Mr Okamoto Fusao,
   Mr Isawa Yoshiaki
7. Vocal solo – Satsuma-gata (Satsuma Bay)67 – Mrs Kobayashi
8. Cornet solo – Natsukashi no hahaue (Longing for Mother) (Stick)68 – Mr Stick

Part 2

1. ‘Orchestra’ (kangengaku) – Kriegsmarsch69 – Members
2. Four-part chorus – Aki no urami (Regrets of autumn) –
   Miss Izumi Kyōko (with three others)
3. Harmonica solo – Polka – A member
4. Shakuhachi solo – Zangetsu – Mr Adachi Kochō
5. Vocal ensemble – Yasumasa; Hanabi70 – Miss Nagao Seiko,
   Miss Nagao Tomoko (with two others)
6. Violin solo – Rekorēto⁷¹ – Mr Okamoto Fusao
7. Vocal solo –  Apyū72 – Mrs Kobayashi
8. Piano solo – (to be determined) – Miss Hansen
9. Mellophone solo – Oh Master Take me through the Gate73

Part 3

Opera – Kaichōon (Sound of the Tide)⁷⁴ – Members

Masao, the (presumably) self-appointed critic, was not impressed with the concert, concluding that ‘artistically, there was no performance of overpowering force’.⁷⁵ His criticism began with the school song by the association’s members, which apparently preceded the programme: ‘one would expect people born as men to sing out’, he observed and suggested that if they could not do better, it would be better to have the audience join in. Nor was he impressed by the ‘orchestra’, which in his opinion did not deserve that name. His criticism of the harmonica performance (item 4) was particularly harsh:

Properly speaking, to even think of the harmonica as a musical instrument seems misguided. If it must be played at all, a march or similar might be acceptable. But when some hybrid version of ‘Echigo jishi’ or ‘Rokudan’ is played, blaring out so-called compound notes – oh my goodness, I involuntarily blushed with shame. It is like a beggar gate-crashing an evening reception on the Emperor’s birthday. [...] If you want to play that kind of thing, do it for a gathering of maid servants on the upper floor of your lodgings.76

Clearly, the reviewer had no time for blended performances. When it came to more traditional Japanese performances like the shakuhachi solo that followed, he had to admit his ignorance and make up for it by quoting from a Chinese classic: apparently not uncommon among reviewers commenting on Western music they were unfamiliar with.⁷⁷ Significantly, this reviewer resorted to the same ploy when commenting on music he felt he ought to be familiar with, but which, as he admitted, he had not listened to with great attention.

He was more confident in his evaluation of the piano and violin performances (items 2 and 6). Kate Hansen’s performance did not pass muster: before concluding that her performance was an asset (see the quote at the beginning of this chapter), he asserted:

Miss Hansen’s piano playing is certainly more than the fingerings of a novice’s unskilled hand. However, precisely because her technique [he uses the foreign word] is flawless, one might, with the greatest respect, put it negatively, and say that it is like a music box. It still lacks the power to impress deeply and cannot be acknowledged to represent the life and soul of true art.78

Ironically, his criticism mirrors Hansen’s remarks about Japanese performers, although, if her own description of her performance (in another concert) of The Devil’s March, a popular salon piece and hardly the last thing in high art, is anything to go by, Masao may well have had some justification for his remarks.

His comment on the violin duet’s performance was even more scathing: ‘I will merely point out that on the violin you should not make a sound like the whining of a mosquito suffering from a lung disease.’⁷⁹ Mrs Kobayashi’s solo performance of Satsuma-gata, too, had him in the role of the discerning authority. Having heard it performed by a chorus at the Tokyo Academy of Music five or six years previously, he felt he could appreciate it more than the other members of the audience. He did, however, express his preference for the choral version and for the more recent Japanese lyrics by Ishikuro Kosaburō, who had translated the German text rather than compose an entirely different one.80 Even if Mrs Kobayashi (who may conceivably have trained and learnt Satsuma-gata, at the Tokyo Academy) did not wish to sing the new lyrics, he remarked, she should at least have announced Schumann’s song with the new translated title, ‘Rurō no tami’ (The vagrant people/gypsies), although the audience probably would not understand the words of either.

The lyrics of two other songs likewise gave him cause for criticism. Aki no urami he had heard sung as Haha naki wagaya (Our home without a mother),81 the words of which fit the tune better in his opinion. The song Yasumasa, on the other hand, he pronounced ill-chosen: the ‘la la la(tsu) la la la la la’ was ‘a bit too unartistic’, although the song was still better than the likes of Roei no yume.82 Recalling Hansen’s remarks about ignorant self-appointed experts in Western music, one wonders whether he realized that the composer of the music of Yasumasa was Mozart. On the other hand, Mozart’s composition and the Japanese lyrics cannot be described as a good fit.83 The critic’s low opinion of Kitamura’s Roei no yume, together with his remarks about song lyrics and about playing Japanese tunes on a harmonica, suggests that he favoured Western art music. Indeed, he even appealed to the organizers to ban unmusical instruments like the accordion and the biwa from future concerts.84 Kate Hansen would surely have approved.

If Masao was critical of several performers, he had equally harsh words for the behaviour of the audience. Having praised J. Monroe Stick’s cornet solo, he remarked, ‘this man’s serious approach to his art never fails to fill me with respect.’85 He contrasted this with the attitude of the audience, who ‘hoot and heckle and confuse a concert with a playground’ and who ‘shout ridiculous nonsense as they enter’.⁸⁶ He expressed his contempt for the audience again after praising the bass singer in the vocal quartet: ‘Of course one cannot expect the hooting crowd (yajiren) to appreciate the appeal of the bass singer. The soprano will attract attention on the strength of her beauty alone, but the manly (otoko rashii), truly deep voice that comes from the innermost heart (haifu) is too sober (shibui) for them and does not hold their interest.’ The mob, he continued, might be satisfied by a female playing the koto, but knew no greater pleasure than listening to the biwa or a band accompanying Asakusa street artists. He suggested that such people should be discouraged from attending or at least urged to keep quiet. The assertion that the (predominantly male?) audience appreciated the female performers for their appearance rather than their musical performance resembles Kate Hansen’s remarks in her discussion of the koto in Musical Consciousness; another indication that Western observers’ disdain for popular Japanese music was matched by the local elites’ contempt for music they deemed ‘common’.

The ‘so-called opera’ performed in the third and final part of the concert presented Masao with another opportunity to express his contempt for the undiscerning masses, who seemed to enjoy the spectacle, although he himself thought that the only redeeming feature was Mrs Kobayashi’s beautiful singing.87

While the participation of foreigners in the concerts of the Second High School may have decreased over the years (the sample of programmes examined is too small to be sure), musicians from the Tokyo Academy of Music continued to perform at the invitation of the Second High School as they had done at the second concert in 1903. They performed at the school again at least in 1909 and 1913, as well as at other Sendai concerts.⁸⁸ For the concert on 1 May 1909, forty students arrived on 30 April, an event that merited advance announcements in the local newspaper Kahoku shinpō.⁸⁹ The guests performed a total of ten pieces, for piano, strings, and voice. Not all the works are specified (or identifiable), but they included a Romance for Cello solo by Georg Goltermann;⁹⁰ an unspecified work for piano trio, and the vocal solo, Ninin no heishi (Die beiden Grenadiere),⁹¹ described by Kahoku shinpō as ‘a masterpiece (kessaku) by (Heinrich) Heine set to music by the great German composer Schumann’, as well as a choral rendition of the song Ōtōnomiya, based on a song by the German composer Friedrich Silcher.92 The song is another example of the type of blended performance practised in the early years of the Tokyo Academy of Music: a Western composition―in this case a four-part chorus―sung with Japan-themed lyrics.

We can assume that the singing by the students of the Tokyo Academy of Music was of a higher standard than that of their hosts, who also sang on this occasion. The audiences of Sendai, moreover, would have had little chance to hear a cello played competently: much less in a chamber ensemble.

The third part of the concert, consisting of six items with local performers, began with a four-part string ensemble of members of the Music Association playing ‘Tannhäuser’; possibly a performance similar to the one described by Kate Hansen after her first experience of a concert at the Second High School. Okamoto, who played an unspecified violin solo (presumably accompanied by Kate Hansen), was still described as kōshi in the programme, but by the concert on 22 November 1910 he appears to have been replaced by Kumagai kōshi.93

A clear indication of the school’s ambition to present Western music at its most impressive were the efforts to perform as an orchestra, or at least a larger ensemble. The programme of the sixth concert on 15 October 1904 already included a band of sorts, although the majority of players may have come from outside the school.⁹⁴ In fact, it is hard to determine what exactly was behind the term kangengaku (generally translated as ‘orchestra’) in each case. In the concert on 23 September 1907, ‘orchestra’ described ‘four fellows with violins’, according to Kate Hansen. The kangengaku in the concert on 31 October 1908 did not merit the name either, according to the reviewer; nor did the kangen gassō in 1910: ten players led by the new teacher. In June 1915 a report in Ongakukai stated that the school finally had an orchestra (kangengaku) and that a full orchestra was planned for the near future. Even so, the description of the items on the programme of the recent concert makes this a dubious assertion. Although four out of a total of eleven items are described as a ‘string ensemble’ (gengaku gassō) and one as a ‘string and wind ensemble’ (kangen gassō), the titles of the pieces suggest the usual fare of works arranged for a variety of instrument combinations. A possible exception is the ‘first string ensemble’ item, an adagio from an unspecified symphony.95 Symphony orchestras were still a rarity in Japan in 1915.

The people of Sendai nevertheless had a chance to hear a major ensemble performing to a high standard at a concert on 23 October 1920, the last one at the Second High School reported in Ongakukai: a string orchestra and chorus consisting of students and staff from the Academy performed the Grand March from Tannhäuser under the baton of Gustav Kron.96

In 1915 Ongakukai described the concerts organized by the music aficionados (yūshi) of the Second High School as ‘the centre of the musical world in Sendai’.⁹⁷ This may, of course, have been the (hardly unbiased) view of a local observer: the ambitions of the music club clearly exceeded the skills and resources of the students. In the early twentieth century, it would have been rare to have learnt the violin or the piano from an early age, particularly for young men. Nor would they have had the opportunity to hear a symphony concert, much less a Western-style opera, so it is hardly surprising that the ‘opera’ Kaichōon or what the programmes describe as an ‘orchestra’ did not merit the name. But the students who organized the concerts succeeded in bringing together local musicians with different backgrounds who performed a wide range of works. Even allowing for the small number of programmes sampled and the appearance of the same piece under different names, there seems to be relatively little repetition. By hosting concerts with musicians from Tokyo, the school made it possible for their local audience to hear works that could not otherwise be performed in Sendai.

Miyagi Normal School

Miyagi Normal School (Miyagi Shihan Gakkō) trained both male and female students until the founding of Miyagi Normal School for Women in 1913. Although the required subjects for future teachers included music, musical training was basic, and the criticism of music education at the school expressed in Ongakukai in one its earliest reports is likely to have been well-founded, judging from the available concert programmes.98 We can assume that concerts were held regularly, perhaps twice yearly. They consisted mainly of shōka, as often as not sung in unison, with a few pieces for violin, piano, or organ. The instrumental pieces are not always specified in the published programmes, and are likely to have come from the teaching literature.

The relatively low level of performance and the limited range of genres performed do not, however, mean that the concerts did not contribute significantly to the musical education of Sendai audiences. The concert on 4 March 1911, for example, reportedly drew an audience of around 1,500; presumably it included a large number of parents, since the first part consisted of performances by pupils of the affiliated elementary school. Of the thirty musical items, nearly all were songs, sung solo or in groups of varying sizes. Two were violin solos, one of them performed by a man from the main school (he also performed in the second part); the third instrumental piece was an unspecified ensemble performance by volunteers from the main school.99

The second part consisted of thirty-five items (including an opening address by Shikama Jinji and a closing address by the head of the school), again mostly singing. Six items were instrumental performances: an organ solo and a violin ensemble (pieces not specified); violin and organ, Hail Columbia March; violin ensemble, Donauwellen; violin, Adagio (unspecified); violin, Jūdan no kyoku (Ten steps). 100 The songs are all given with Japanese titles, except for two that are spelt in katakana and were presumably sung in English, as they both appear in a three-volume collection of shōka in English published in 1910: Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground and Home Sweet Home.¹⁰¹ The former, composed in 1852, is one of Stephen Foster’s plantation songs, some of which gained worldwide popularity.102 Three items were billed as tokuhon shōka (reading textbook songs) without a specific title. These were songs based on the texts in the national readers used in elementary schools. The Ministry of Education published its first collection in 1910, but by then several had been published by individuals.

Subsequent concerts followed a similar pattern. The concert on 2 March 1912, the sixth, according to Ongakukai, included twenty-five musical items, six of them instrumental (violin and organ). In addition, a guest violinist, Hongō Kōshirō, performed two pieces: Siciliano and Berceuse de Jocelyn.103

In March 1914, Ongakukai reported progress at the Normal School following the appointment of a new professor, who arranged concerts with good musicians in order to cultivate the students’ taste in music. The concerts of the previous October, with students from the Tokyo Academy of Music, had fuelled the enthusiasm of teachers and students alike.¹⁰⁴ The concert on 7 February was deemed a great success, with 300 students performing, as well as children from the affiliated school, afficionados from the Second High School, and guest performers, including the violinists Hongō Kōshirō and Kumagai Senta. The reporter nevertheless regretted the small number of violin players, due to the fact that violin was not part of the standard curriculum. In fact, the published programme only included one solo violin performance by Hongō, while Kumagai is listed as a singer in a two-part song, Tabi no yoru.¹⁰⁵ The other instrumental items were the organ (six items), the piano (two), as well as two string ensembles of the students from the high school.

Hongō and Kumagai may have been regulars; perhaps they taught at the school on a casual basis. They also performed at the concert at the Normal School for Men on 26 February 1916: Hongō played a violin solo in the first part of the programme, accompanied by Kumagai. Kumagai also sang tenor in a choral number. In the second part (in which Hongō’s name did not appear), Kumagai played a violin solo. The concert concluded with a string ensemble whose members were described as volunteers (possibly students from the Second High School) and presumably played violins, while Kumagai played the cello; they were accompanied by a female teacher.¹⁰⁶ Except for one more violin item in the first half (the performer is not named), the other instrumental performances were on the organ or piano (three each). All in all, ten of the thirty-two items on the programme were instrumental; the others were songs, mostly shōka. Among them, Tipperary Song, sung solo, may well have been a first in Sendai. It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, first published in 1912 and recorded in 1914, is very much associated with the First World War. Japan had entered the war as an ally of Britain, and the Japanese navy saw battle both in Asia and in the Mediterranean. Compared to the Russo-Japanese War ten years earlier, however, the war was remote. The other items on the programme were not particularly warlike (if one discounts the usual military marches); indeed, the same singer’s other offering was Hanyū no yado (Our humble dwelling), the Japanese version of Home, Sweet Home.

The predominance of shōka over instrumental numbers was even more evident in the concert of the Normal School for Women on 24 February 1917: twenty-four out of the twenty-seven musical items were vocal (the programme specified the number of parts). They included Schumann’s Zigeunerleben, now with the translated title Rurō no tami and (presumably) sung with the translated lyrics by Ishikuro Kosaburō.

A year later, Ongakukai reported the appointment of a new teacher, Inose, who performed for the first time at the concert on 16 February 1918, playing Ave Maria on the violin.107 Another innovation was a new music club, the Orfeo Club, formed by afficionados at the school. The last item before the concert ended with the school song was Gunkan māchi (Warship march), performed by a chorus and string ensemble consisting of students and afficionados. Composed and arranged by Japanese, it is still one of the most-performed Japanese marches.¹⁰⁸ The programme included one performance by a foreigner, Mrs ’Genzā’, who sang The Mission of a Rose. ¹⁰⁹

Singing, much of it in unison, also predominated in the concert in 1918, interspersed with performances on the violin, piano, or organ, usually solos or duets. The overall pattern of the concerts thus seems to have remained fairly similar during the period examined here. Standards are likely to have risen, as recorded in Ongakukai, but this is hard to tell from concert programmes alone. Unlike the Second High School, the curriculum of the Normal Schools included music, so the concerts served as an opportunity for the students to show what they had learnt. Nevertheless, performers from outside the school were invited as well, so the concerts were in part a joint effort involving the cooperation of different local groups. The last concert reported in Ongakukai, held on 19 February 1921, represented a major initiative, including as it did performances by pupils and teachers of several schools. The programme, which consisted of thirty-two musical items, nineteen vocal and thirteen instrumental ones, was as follows:

1. Ensemble – A. Gaisen seru shōgun o miyo (See the Conquering Hero Comes) (Handel)110; B. Kanashiki enbukyoku (Sad waltz) (Ivanovich)111 – string ensemble
2. Unison singing – A. Kyōshū (Longing for home); B. Sakura (‘Cherry blossoms’)¹¹² – Main department, first year
3. Piano solo – Battle of Waterloo¹¹³ – second year
4. Vocal solo – Tsubame (Swallows) – pupils from affiliated school¹¹⁴
5. Violin solo – Madrigal¹¹⁵ – fourth year
6. Unison singing – A. Yoru (Evening); B. Chishima (Kurile Islands?)116 – Kita Gobanchō Higher Elementary School
7. Piano and violin – Csikós Post (Necke)¹¹⁷ – two third-year students
8. Chorus, two-part – Shun’ya no yume (Dream on a spring night)¹¹⁸ – Higashi Nibanchō Higher Elementary School
9. Shōka – A. Mittsu no fune (Three ships) (round); B. Yoru no o-yashiro (Shrine in the evening)119 (two-part) – First High School for Women (Daiichi Kōtō Jogakkō)
10. Piano solo – Wiener Marsch¹²⁰
11. Male voices, three-part – A. Yū no inori (Evening prayer);
    B. Yamato Takeru¹²¹
12. Shōka – (no title given) – Higashi Nibanchō Jikka Kōtō Jogakkō
13. Vocal solo – Komori uta (Lullaby) – students from Tōka High School for Girls (Tōka Kōtō Jogakkō)
14. Piano solo – Allegro (Beethoven) – third-year student
15. Mixed chorus – A. Koishiki haha (Beloved mother);
    B. Taihei no homare (In praise of peace)122 – Kenkyūkai members from the schoo)
16. Piano solo – Ito tsumugu onna (Raff)¹²³ – performed by Prof. Yoshii, Dai Ichi Joshi Kōtō Gakkō

Part 2

17. Unison – Tanoshiki misono (Pleasant garden)124 – six girls from the affiliated elementary school
18. Unison – A. Kono kimi kono kuni (This ruler, this land);
    B. Enyūkai (Banquet)125 – second-year students
19. Violin duet – Allegro (Bōmu)¹²⁶ – students from the extracurricular course at the Dai Ichi Kōtō Jogakkō
20. Mixed voices – Sansaijo (Three females)¹²⁷ – female students
21. Vocal solo – Ongaku ni yosu (To music)¹²⁸ – fourth-year student
22. Piano solo – Hochzeitsmarsch (Wedding march)¹²⁹ –
    fourth-year student
23. Female voices, three-part – Shungyō (Spring dawn)¹³⁰ –
    Tōka High School for Girls, fourth-year students
24. Organ solo – Fantasia and Fugue (Bach) – Ichikawa, teacher at the school
25. Mixed voices – Haru no uta (‘Spring song’)131 (a cappella) – female teachers from city schools and Kenkyūkai members from this school
26. Piano solo – Fantasy (Mendelssohn) – Professor Imai from the Tōka High School for Girls
27. Violin solo – Romance (Wieniawski?)132 – Tejima, teacher at the Sendai High School for Girls
28. Male four-part Chorus – Rurō no tami (Zigeunerleben) – from school
29. Piano duet – Kalif of Bagdad133 (Boieldieu) – Miyagi Jogakkō teachers Ono, Satō
30. Chorus, three-part – A. Lascia ch’io pianga (Handel);
    B. Lindenbaum (Schubert)134 – Chorus of the Engineering Department of Tohoku University (Tōhoku Daigaku Kōgaku Senmonbu)
31. Wind and string ensemble (clarinet; violins 1, 2, and 3; cello) – A. Moment Musical (Schubert); B. Minuet (Beethoven) – afficionados from music club at Tohoku Imperial University
32. Mixed chorus – a cappella Kōen no uta (Festive merriment song)135 – female teachers from city schools and Kenkyūkai members from this school

The concert brought together teachers and students from several schools in Sendai: besides the Normal School and its affiliated schools, performers came from at least six other institutions, ranging from elementary schools to the Imperial University. The Second High School is not named, but some of its music enthusiasts may have joined the larger ensembles. No foreign performers are named; unlike twenty or even ten years earlier, there were enough experienced Japanese teachers and performers. The overall programme did not differ significantly from previous ones: more than half of the thirty-two items were songs; only thirteen were instrumental performances, with most of the titles suggesting a fairly elementary level, except, perhaps, those played by teachers (assuming they were played with a reasonable level of competence). The works do, however, represent a wide range of musical styles in a single concert, something that by this time may well have been appreciated by the more experienced concert-goers in the audience. Some of the pieces may have been familiar to them from previous performances.¹³⁶

Compared to most other programmes, particularly the early ones, this one included a fair number of works from the canon of the composers generally perceived as the greatest representatives of European art music: Händel (items 1; 30); Bach (24); Beethoven (14; 31); Schubert (21; 30; 31); Mendelssohn (22; 26; possibly, 25); and Schumann (28). Clearly, local actors on the Sendai music scene had made both the institution of the concert and the music performed at it their own.

Miyagi College

The highest standards of performance by local players may well have been achieved in the concerts organized by Miyagi College. Certainly, levels of ambition were high, as Kate Hansen’s activities demonstrate. The college regularly held concerts and recitals (significantly more than the five reported in Ongakukai), as well as other events that included musical performance: the annual graduation ceremonies, for example, would have included musical recitals, as did the programme of the ‘Twenty-third Anniversary of the Miyagi Jo Gakko Literary Society’ on 27 November 1914.137 In addition, the recital by Florence Seiple reported in Ongakukai in 1915 would not have been the only one. Kate Hansen’s ‘little private recital’ mentioned in a letter to her sister in February 1908 may well have been the first of several.138 But while all these events would have exposed locals to Western music, they were not always open to the general public. Most of the performers in the concerts reported in Ongakukai were foreigners, predominately missionary teachers and their families. Whether Ongakukai found these concerts more newsworthy, or whether concerts with performances by the female students tended to be for a restricted audience is hard to tell. Although Kate Hansen did not mention it, the more conservative families in Sendai may well have had reservations about letting their daughters perform in public concerts.

The programme of the concert described by Kate Hansen in May 1908 (see previous chapter) is the most varied of those published in Ongakukai: none of the others include Japanese music, although that does not mean that none was performed. Still, as Miyagi College’s musical ambitions rose, they may well have felt they could dispense with such concessions to their audience. These were concerts where the local audience had the opportunity to hear works from the what today is perceived as the standard repertoire, such as a Beethoven sonata, performed by Kate Hansen or Mrs Denning―or at least a single movement. We cannot be sure that the entire work was performed in each case: Hansen and Denning may not have played the entire sonatas by Grieg and Beethoven respectively at the concert on 10 May 1912, of which Hansen wrote to her mother that it was regarded as ‘the best thing musically that’s ever been given in Sendai’.139 The other twelve items on the programme were songs or short instrumental pieces. The concert ended with Wagner’s Walkürenritt for piano for four hands played by Hansen and Dening, a performance that must have represented an impressive finale. The other offerings do not appear very different from those at other concerts, but the experience of regularly performing in public may well have resulted in a rise in standards of performance among the foreigners as well as the Japanese. Hansen performed the Walkürenritt again in a school concert on 11 March 1916, with Mrs Kriete.140

By 1912 Miyagi College was already known for the quality of its music: two years earlier, Ongakukai had described it as an ‘authority in the musical world of Sendai’ and praised the concert held on 16 June 1910.141 The concert featured performances by three sisters, the daughters of Henry Mohr and Emma Marie Landis, Presbyterian missionaries and teachers at Meiji Gakuin College in Tokyo. Possibly the programme in Ongakukai is incomplete, as it only lists nine items, all played by the sisters: for piano duet, Spanish Dance and Polish Dance by Moszkowski¹⁴²and an unspecified piece from Gounod’s opera Faust; for piano solo, La fileuse by Raff; ‘Nocturne’ for left hand by the Russian composer Scriabin (the programme mentions his nationality); a work by Chopin, and La Polka de la Reine by Raff;143 for violin, a fantasy by Vieuxtemps; Bohemian song by Antonin Dvořák and Barcarole by Hauser, and Romance by Beethoven.144 According to Ongakukai the three young ladies had chosen pieces that suited the people of Tohoku. The (unnamed) commentator particularly praised the Fantasy by Vieuxtemps and the Faust duet, and concluded that the three performers had truly contributed to the local music scene.¹⁴⁵

The Landis sisters performed again the following year: in a letter to her sister dated 21 May 1911 and describing the twenty-fifth anniversary concert at Tohoku College on 16 May (of which she enclosed the programme), Kate Hansen wrote, ‘The Landis girls are the same ones who helped with a concert here last spring, when they were just back from Germany. They really play well.’146 Indeed, the programme of the concert in 1910 suggests that the three sisters, although still in their teens, were highly proficient on their instruments.¹⁴⁷

Recitals by the teachers at Miyagi College represented a new format for the local audience. Hansen describes one she gave on 9 June 1914 as ‘the first of its kind ever held in Sendai’. The school had invited the local foreigners and ‘all the Japanese we knew of who had studied any music, the parents of all the schoolgirls, a lot of the common-school teachers and principals, all our own alumnae and students, and a crowd of other people of the kind we want to get interested in our school.’ Hansen played the programme from memory, a first for her and ‘terrifying in some ways’.148 She was supported by Carl D. Kriete and his wife Beth (the couple was based in Yamagata), whom she described in a letter to her sister as ‘thorough musicians’.¹⁴⁹ Carl Kriete had sung baritone in the choir as a student, while Beth, a pianist, was conservatoire-trained.

A year later, on 16 April 1915, Florence Seiple gave a recital accompanied by Hansen, who also played solo. The reporter for Ongakukai speculated that Seiple may have hoped to become an opera singer, because her impressive rendering of an aria from Samson and Delilah, ‘where Delilah seduces Samson’, suggested that it was a forte of Sendai’s ‘primadonna’. 150 Presumably, this was Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix from Act 2 of Camille Saint-Saëns’ opera; indeed a daring choice for a missionary wife. Seiple’s other offerings, songs by Johannes Brahms and the American Romantic composer Edward Alexander MacDowell (1860–1908), were more conventional.

It’s a long way back from this to the concerts they used to have here, when audiences of a couple thousand people would listen gravely for half an hour at a time to boy students’ playing exercises and scales with one finger and imagine they were hearing Western music! They were still having them in my first year or two in Sendai. Now there is a considerable public which is beginning to know quite a bit about what music really is, and that helps our school, of course.151

The concerts at Miyagi College probably reached a smaller and less diverse audience than those held at the Normal School. For those who did attend, however, they represented an opportunity to hear major works of European art music as well as what we today might regard as salon pieces, played to a relatively high, sometimes professional standard. Performances would have included the oratorios Kate Hansen mentioned in Impressions, although, possibly, performed in a church service rather than a concert.152

Japanese students and audiences, however, were not the only ones whose experience of Western art music increased and deepened. While Hansen only hints at it in her letters, she ―and presumably her Western colleagues ―also developed and progressed. In Sendai they had opportunities to perform that they might not have had to the same extent if they had stayed in their home countries. They may well have been more confident, knowing as they did that their audience (at least initially) were undiscerning, and have chosen works they might not otherwise have dared to play in public. Of Hansen we know that she took every opportunity to further her skills and knowledge. She revised her initially low opinion of the audience, and her choice of repertoire pieces like Devil’s March were replaced with sonatas by Beethoven and Grieg. We might also ask ourselves whether Florence Seiple would have performed Delilah’s aria of seduction for an audience in an American provincial town. Miyagi College provides a striking illustration of how the musical encounter affected all the parties involved, not just those generally perceived to be at the receiving end.

Other Institutions

Concerts were also organized at other schools, but they may well have been smaller, less public affairs. At any rate, only a few were reported in Ongakukai, and not all reports included a programme. One that did was a concert held on 23 March 1917 at Sendai High School for Girls.153 The programme listed an opening and a closing address and nine musical items: vocal, piano, and violin solos and a violin duet. The duet was played by Hongō and Kumagai (the latter described as an external teacher). That same year, on 21 November 1917 a concert held at Shōkei School for Girls was reported, with a programme of eight items: chorus, vocal solo, piano, and organ.154 Neither of these two was significantly different from the other programmes described. Performers at Shōkei included Mrs Iglehart, the wife of a Methodist missionary.

Local societies also organized concerts. In December 1916, Ongakukai reported the establishment of the Sendai Musical Amateur Club (Sendai Ongaku Dōkō Kurabu).155 The club had been formed in November with the intention to refine the local people’s musical sensibilities and to study and cultivate Western music, perceived as being underdeveloped in the city, which did not even have a dedicated concert hall.¹⁵⁶ The inaugural concert on 18 November, in the auditorium of the Second High School, featured three performers from Tokyo: Tōgi Tetsusaburō (violinist), Ōwada Aira (singer and cellist), and Hirota Ryūtarō (composer and pianist).157 All three were graduates of and teachers at the Tokyo Academy of Music. While the programme was not unlike others in Sendai at the time, it included two string quartet items, in which the local violinists Hongō and Kumagai joined the guests (each playing second violin in one), as well as two piano trio performances.¹⁵⁸ The concert was deemed a success, attracting an audience of 1,400.

The club organized another concert in May 1917, again with musicians from Tokyo. This time Tōgi and Ōwada were joined by the pianist Sakakibara Naoshi and the soprano singer Takeoka Tsuruyo.159 Besides Mendelssohn’s piano trio in G minor (performed by Tōgi and Owada, with Sakakibara at the piano), a string quartet by Haydn in G major,160 and Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the audience were treated to Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata (or at least a movement from it) and the final movement of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto in E minor.161 Again, the local violinists Hongō and Kumagai took part.¹⁶² This concert too was described as a success, with 1,300 people attending in the newly built city hall. According to Ongakukai, this was all the more noteworthy because of the difficulties of organizing concerts in provincial towns. Another report in Ongakukai two months later even claimed that the audience had numbered 2,500 and praised Takeoka’s singing, adding that her songs had become popular among the local girls. Nevertheless, Takeoka was not actually named together with the other guest performers from Tokyo, and her name did not appear in the programme: since no other singer is named, she presumably sang Hiru no yume (Midday dream), composed by Fukada Sada, and the soprano part in an unspecified duet from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, with Ōwada Aira singing the other part.163 Possibly, the omission was due to a notion that the name of a young woman who had only graduated the previous month did not merit a mention together with the famous stars, or else she had been roped in at the last minute. Takeno continued into the graduate department and went on to an impressive career as a performer and pedagogue, as well as a co-founder in 1926 of what today is Kunitachi College of Music.

The author of the report concluded by praising the work of the society, but then ended on a critical note. The habit of people in Tohoku to argue about everything hampered progress: ‘Those who devote themselves to music and while teaching at one school go to the extreme of interfering with the staging of other concerts, are behaving outrageously. Those who aim to further the growth of music must eliminate these members as quickly as possible.’164 The cooperation of different parties evinced by several of the concert programmes was clearly far from self-evident.

Representing the Nation and the World in Sendai

By the early 1920s, then, participation in concerts whether as listener, performer, or organizer, had widened and diversified, with new actors, such as the Amateur Club and members of Tohoku Imperial University, appearing on the scene. The people of Sendai had the opportunity to hear a wide range of Western music, sometimes performed to a high standard. As for Japanese music, the reporters for Ongakukai were chiefly concerned with Western music, so other sources would have to be consulted in order to reach definite conclusions, but the absence of references to Japanese music in the later reports, together with its disappearance from published concert programmes, suggests that the distance between the two musical worlds had increased.

Judging from the sample of concert programmes published in Ongakukai, performances varied between the different organizing institutions and over time. Nevertheless, some general characteristics are discernible. Performances included solos and vocal and instrumental ensembles ranging from duets to small orchestras. The predominant musical instruments were the piano or (reed) organ and the violin, and, in Japanese music, the koto and the shamisen as well as the satsumabiwa. The local musicians consisted mainly of students and their teachers, among them the foreign teachers and other members of the foreign community. Visiting musicians most commonly came from the Tokyo Academy of Music.

The repertoire consisted largely of shōka, hymns, and fairly elementary instrumental pieces. The number and variety of shōka published in Japan by this time means that close examination would require a study of its own. The later collections increasingly included compositions by Japanese. Indeed, for tokuhon shōka (reading textbook songs) this could not be otherwise, since the text was a given. Even shōka not specifically described as such were often based on the contents of school textbooks. Setting existing lyrics to a tune represented a marked departure from the adoption of shōka in the early days of the Tokyo Academy of Music, when Western tunes had to be fitted with suitable Japanese lyrics.

Chronologically, the repertoire ranged from the European Baroque era to contemporary music. Among the instrumental pieces, marches were particularly frequent, reflecting the strong presence of military-style music in the repertoire of nineteenth-century Western music. Many items might be classified as salon pieces, with the term used in a broad sense to include both music composed chiefly for playing at home and arrangements of popular excerpts from larger works such as operas and oratorios, including works largely forgotten today, such as unspecified items from Flotow’s opera Martha (conceivably, The Last Rose of Summer, the melody of which would have been familiar to most Japanese from one of the earliest shōka); or from Wallace’s Maritana.165 Other operatic favourites included Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner.166

The most iconic ‘great masters’, on the other hand, are strikingly underrepresented. Beethoven, for example, for all the reverence the Japanese expressed for his name, (as attested by Kate Hansen) and for all his status as the icon of European art music, is conspicuous by his absence in most of the programmes examined. He is named (or can be definitely identified) as a composer in seven of the programmes examined, four of them performed by foreigners at Miyagi College or musicians from the Tokyo Academy of Music.167 Mozart, that other iconic composer, is named in eight concert programmes (twice in two of them), with two of them featuring local Japanese performers.168

The breadth of the repertoire reinforces the understanding of these concerts as a creative space in which the imagination, stimulated by the sonic experience and the different titles that described its elements, could roam beyond the borders of the city and the prefecture to encompass the whole Japanese nation, and the world beyond its borders. The extent of the familiarity of the pieces would have varied, from Japanese and blended music, and shōka that by the 1900s had been sung for many years, to the marches and dances that were staples of military and civilian band performances, and, finally, Western popular songs and instrumental works that evoked faraway and mythical places, and, less often, chamber music and solos that might be described as art music proper.

The programme of the concert at the Normal School in 1921, introduced above, includes examples of all of the (Western-style) genres mentioned. The opening work, See the Conquering Hero Comes from Händel’s Judas Maccabäus, is an example of a work based on a story from Biblical times. The popular chorus has been adapted and arranged in many forms, and had probably been performed at previous concerts.169 Another example is the War March of the Priests from Mendelssohn’s Athalia (Op. 74), which in the nineteenth century was as popular as his Wedding March, performed in the same concert (item 22), and appeared on at least three programmes in Sendai.170 Other exotic settings are the (Middle Eastern) Orient, represented by The Caliph of Baghdad (29), and the gypsy camp portrayed in Schumann’s Zigeunerleben (28), now sung with translated lyrics.171 Gypsies are also evoked in Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, still one of the most popular violin pieces in Japan (and elsewhere); the performance by Tōgi Tetteki at the Sendai Amateur Club’s spring concert in 1917 (billed as Rurōshi no uta) may well have been a Sendai first, given its level of difficulty.

The audience would not have known this, but François-Adrien Boieldieu, the composer of The Caliph, also composed the tune of Kono kimi kono kuni (This ruler, this land; item 18), a patriotic song that begins with ‘The height of Mount Fuji, the depth of Lake Biwa...’. The famous landmarks would have been almost as distant as a foreign country to most of the population of Sendai before the political unification of the country and construction of the railway network. If Chishima (Kurile Islands; item 6B) is, as seems likely, the song Dōho subete rokusenman (Our sixty million brethren), then the opening lines, ‘From Karafuto and Chishima in the North to Taiwan, Penghu, and the eight provinces of Korea in the South’, describe the extent of the Japanese empire at the end of the Meiji era. The (mythical) beginnings of the Japanese nation are the subject of Yamato Takeru (11). The song of the Gunkan māchi (Warship march), on the other hand, performed at the Normal School concert in February 1918, bore the message that Japan had to protect itself against a potentially hostile world.

Many compositions in other concerts evoked foreign nations or regions in their titles. The concert programme with the Landis sisters (16 June 1910) alone included a ‘Spanish’ and a ‘Polish’ dance as well as a ‘Bohemian song’, while two composers were described as French and Russian respectively. The names of several marches included place names; for example, the Second High School concert on 31 March 1903 included the Louisville March, Grand Russian March and Washington March.172 The American patriotic song Hail Columbia featured in several concerts.¹⁷³

Perhaps as a counterweight to a world that had become larger and, even while fascinating, more threatening, shōka expressing a nostalgic longing or a sense of loss were popular items. In the 1921 programme examined here, Kyōshū (Longing for home; item 2) and Koishiki haha (Beloved mother; 15) almost certainly fall into this category. The all-time favourite, however, was Home, Sweet Home, which was sung or played in several concerts either in English, or in Japanese, as Hanyū no yado (Our humble dwelling) or Tanoshiki wagaya (Our happy home).174 Even in the sentimental evocation of the home―another modern construct―the Japanese in Sendai and elsewhere were in tune with their contemporaries in the English-speaking world. Home Sweet Home, composed by Henry R. Bishop and premiered as part of Payne’s 1823 operetta Clari, or the Maid of Milan, became one of the most popular sentimental songs of the nineteenth century (and beyond), widely circulated as sheet music and sung by amateurs at home and by professional singers on the stage.175 The song has since featured in American films, and plays a central part in Ichikawa Kon’s 1956 film The Burmese Harp. Early in the film, a company of Japanese soldiers find themselves surrounded by British in a remote Burmese village. They sing Home, Sweet Home with Japanese lyrics in order to trick the British soldiers into believing that their presence has not been noticed by the Japanese. But as they prepare for a surprise attack, the British soldiers respond by singing the same song with its English lyrics. The Japanese soldiers surrender and learn that the war ended three days previously. In this scene, singing together, albeit in different languages, is represented as ‘a unifying act’, through which the soldiers on opposing sides recognize their common humanity.¹⁷⁶

War, of course, represents a major break with the past, both for the nations and the individuals involved. But modernity itself is defined by the notion of progress and rapid movement away from the past. Nostalgia, a melancholic sense of irretrievable loss, depends on this notion and is a quintessentially modern phenomenon.¹⁷⁷ Music gave expression to that loss. Julian Johnson describes the nineteenth-century Lied as ‘a vehicle of nostalgia’ and as ‘one of the most explicit genres of musical re-membering, defined by a peculiarly modern quality of temporal dissonance to which it gives exemplary form.’178 The examples he analyses are art songs from the classical canon, but the characterization would seem to apply to the songs by composers like Stephen Foster and Henry Rowley Bishop. For Japan and other non-Western countries, the break with the past was particularly extreme because it involved being confronted with cultural traditions radically different from their own.179 Nostalgia is strongly present in Japan’s culture today, musically and otherwise, something generally ascribed to the abruptness and rapidity of Japan’s course of modernization, Westernization, and urbanization.¹⁸⁰

The modern space of the concert brought inhabitants of Sendai from diverse backgrounds together for the purpose of performing and listening to music. This in itself was new. Through the foreign music they encountered the world outside Japan. Whether as listeners or performers, they could, simultaneously with their contemporaries in other parts of the world, imagine and experience themselves as part of a much wider world than the provincial city they lived in, or even the nation it belonged to. By performing the music, they were simultaneously performing an imagined worldwide community: symbolically ‘keeping together in time’ and (increasingly) in tune with the modern world of nations.