Any discussion of contemporary Japanese music scholarship must take into account a disturbing movement known as nihonjinron (roughly, 'the question of the Japanese people') which has come to permeate virtually every aspect of modern Japanese culture. Reminiscent of Japan's World War II propaganda, nihonjinron is an attempt on the part of its writers to glorify Japan and Japanese culture, often at the expense of truth. In Japanese musicology, as in other fields, scholars are able to postulate the most absurd theories and find almost unquestioned acceptance of such theories, merely because they portray Japan in favorable light. This paper will give examples of nihonjinron and, perhaps more importantly, take up two questions: Why have nihonjinron writers been able to get away with what are often quite racist theories and not be challenged by their peers in Japan? And: Why have Western Japan specialists, many of whom speak, read and write Japanese, shown such reluctance to criticize nihonjinron, when the movement flies in the face of every tenet of rigorous, scientific scholarship?
holds a M.Mus degree in Vocal Performance and M.A. in musicology from the University of Hawaii. He was a Monbusho Research Fellow at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music from 1982-4. Recent publications include articles in the International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, and InterArts (Seattle). He has also presented a lecture at the Hawaii International Film Festival entitled "Japanese Film Scores, 1946-present." Mr. Shepherd is currently Chairman of the Music Department at Kauai Community College, Music Critic with the Honolulu Advertiser, and Music Director at the Fort Shafter Base Chapel.
Over the past several decades, Japanese contemporary music has attracted growing attention in the West, with composers such as Toru Takemitsu, Yuji Takahashi, Jo Kondo and others producing a style of music that is inventive in a global sense without sacrificing a distinctly Japanese flavor. Composers such as the aforementioned and others have justifiably earned their palces at or near the vanguard of global contemporary music.
Yet, discussion of Japanese music, whether it be traditional or contemporary, and indeed discussion of virtually all aspects of Japanese culture carries an extra burden in recent years by the surfacing of a movement called nihonjinron (roughly, "the question of Japanese people"), a movement with deep historical roots in the propaganda of World War II Imperial Japan. In its modern manifestation, nihonjinron might appear to be mere speculative reflection on Japan and Japanese culture, but under more intense scrutiny reveals itself to be a tendencious cultural self-trumpeting in its more benign manifestations and indisputably racist when at its most unsavory.
In his book, "The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness." Peter Dale characterizes nihonjinism writings by three major assumptions or analytical motivations:
"First, they implicitly assume that the Japanese constitute a culturally and socially homogeneous racial entity, whose essence is virtually unchanged from prehistoric times down to the present day. Secondly, they presuppose that the Japanese differ radically from all other known peoples. Thirdly, they are conspicuously nationalistic, displaying a conceptual and procedural hostility to any mode of analysis which might be seen to derive from external, non-Japanese sources. In a general sense then, nihonjinron may be defined as works of cultural nationalism concerned with ostensible 'uniqueness' of Japan in any aspect, and which are hostile to both individual experience and the notion of internal socio-historical diversity."
This movement is not limited to the arts and humanities but rather has managed to pervade virtually every discussion in Japan on Japan itself, on its culture and history, and most often, on what it means to be Japanese.
In the field of ethnomusicology, the book Nihon no Ongaku o Kangaeru `("Thoughts on Japanese Music") by Tomiko Kojima, Professor of Music History at Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music achieved a great measure of popularity (eight printings in eight years) despite its weak methodology and questionable assertations arising therefrom. One of the more questionable of these assertations runs as follows:
"...the rhythmic sense is, I think, determined by the lifestyle of a people. For example, the Japanese are an agricultural people who have long lived by paddy-field cultivation. That determines the behavior of the Japanese - the way they do things. Working in the paddy fields, one must stand with the entire surface of the soles of the feet touching the ground, lower the center of gravity, and bend forward, quietly lifting one foot and then the other. So the fundamental beat in Japan is a quiet, simple duple time, with no strong or weak beat. On the other hand, since stock-raising people live mainly on horseback, they have acquired a lively sense of the forward moving, up-and-down rhythm."
Aside from the sweeping and unsubstantiated generalizations which Kojima employs in the above quotation, there is her almost embarrassing implication that duple time has no strong or weak beat, whereas any student with the most fundamental knowledge of meter in music knows that it is impossible to determine what a meter is at all without strong and weak beats.
Kojima's theories also have some blatantly stereotypical overtones:
"Each people has a different way of talking. For example, Italians talk as though they were singing opera. African men talk thickly, like the singing voice of Louis Armstrong. Chinese talk in a flat voice, a result in part of the intonation system of the Chinese language. The way Japanese talk has undergone a great change in recent years. People used to have voices like those of traditional storytellers. The voices of broadcast announcers have also changed; they used to use the natural Japanese voice (sic), but now they have switched to the new voice (sic). From the voices of Japanese intellectuals in their 50s and 60s, I can see their attitudes toward European culture."
One can only guess what Kojima refers to in the final sentence of this quotation, but no guesswork is involved in concluding that she knows virtually nothing of the Chinese language which depends upon tonal gradations rather than "flatness" for its intelligibility. Also of note is her trenchant observation that the way Chinese talk may actually have something to do with the Chinese language(s).
Perhaps one of the most pernicious manifestations of the nihonjinron movement appeared in a 1978 book entitled Nihonjin no No ("The Japanese Brain") by Tadanobu Tsunoda. Tsunoda is an otolaryngologist at Tokyo University, Japan's foremost university, who took up the study of the brain (more specifically the Japanese brain) as a rather ambitious hobby.
In his book, he basically declares that the Japanese "race" (it is commonplace in Japan to refer to the Japanese people as a race distinct from other Asian ethnic groups) is equipped with brains that operate in a significantly more sophisticated manner than those of other, and by implication, "lesser" races of mankind. Tsunda posits that this difference has its basis in the Japanese language, which he claims changes one's brain-wave functions and hemispheric dominance. Since Tsunoda emphasizes that their is no inherent genetic component implied in his findings, it would follow, presumably, that even a Westerner could have a "Japanese" brain if he or she were born into and raised in a wholly Japanese-speaking environment.
Tsunoda's evidence for his findings is based upon studies done either on himself or on a handful of Japanese and Western subjects with no control group; the results of his experiments have never been duplicated by independent researchers. Yet the public and media response to Nihonjin no No has been nothing short of phenomenal, and the book had gone into twenty seven printings by 1983. Tsunoda thus seems to have filled a rather large need in the populace -- scientific "documentation" of Japanese uniqueness.
It would be a great relief to be able to dismiss Tsunoda and Kojima as quacks who are merely tolerated in the Japanese intellectual community. But this is not possible since both have risen to the top of their respective fields on the very basis of such specious methodology. And in the case of Tsunoda, no less than the late, eminent ethnomusicologist Fumio Koizumi is quoted in Nihonjin no No:
"In the music world, your research has been a source of great edification...with your research we now have a basis for understanding the mechanism within the human body to scientifically prove how sensitivity to sound differs. This is truly a source of inspiration. The Japanese hear the sound of insects as music with their dominant left side of the brain, whereas Westerners and others hear it as noise with the right hemisphere of their brains..."
Given that nihonjinron thinking is not a series of isolated incidents, but rather an entire genre of publication (bookstores in Japan typically have whole sections devoted to such works under the very heading "nihonjinron") and also given the fact Japanese academics have launched careers with such works, the question arises as to how theories such as Tsunoda's and Kojima's could go unchallenged in the Japanese scholarly community.
One of the answers is that peer review is almost unheard of in Japan, since, in the academic community as well as everywhere else, there is virtually no such thing as a peer, as the term is known in the West. Higher education reflects the vertical nature of the society at large, with all of its manifestations of sempai-kohai (senior-junior) rank ordering - an arrangement that does little to encourage the free expression of individual thought. For academic success in Japan is often contingent less upon performance than on establishing a strong relationship with the sensei (teacher) and allegiance to the sensei's theories in his or her area of specialization. Studying under a particular sensei implies at least pro forma support for his or her ideas.
Thus, the checks and balances of peer review necessary for rigorous scholarship are less rigorous in Japan, especially since a university professor is afforded almost oracular status in his or her field. He or she is an "expert," not necessarily due to any great academic achievement, but because he or she studied under another "expert"; "experts" are seldom, if ever, challenged in Japan. As the American-educated anthropologist Takie Lebra points out: "A professor and his subordinate (of professorial or lower rank) in the same department can be so linked by obligation that the latter will rarely challenge even a professional paper by the former."
The notion of "correct" thinking is one which now threatens the fabric of academic freedom in the West, but in Japan it is a centuries-old tradition that if one is to succeed in his or her academic career, it behooves the aspirant to adhere assiduously (at least for the sake of appearance) to the views held by one's sensei. To do otherwise would be to dash one's own career.
There remains in this discussion the question of why Western ethnomusicologists and Japan specialists (particularly those fluent in the Japanese language and who are, thus, well aware of nihonjinron influences in their fields) have not come forward to criticize this movement and its effect on music scholarship and on scholarship in general. This would appear to be due, at least partially, to a reluctance on the part of Westerners to criticize non-Western cultures, even when, as has been seen, serious damage is done to the Western-originated academic process of rigorous scholarship using the scientific method. Perhaps fear of being labelled a "Japan-basher" or "racist" is at the root of such apparent reluctance.
"Cultural relativity" would seem another possibility, since Western academics have labored assiduously over the past several decades to avoid even a hint of cultural arrogance or subjectivity. Although perhaps admirable in intent, the effect of such reticence (or fear) has been a proliferation in the present instance of a plethora of putatively "scholarly" works which are often quite racist. How can any serious scholar allow the more pernicious manifestations of nihonjinron to go unchallenged in his or her field?
Two reasons immediately suggest themselves. The first is that those who go into the field of Japan studies or, in the present discussion the study of Japanese music, are usually drawn to the area by an attraction to and fascination with the culture, the country, and the people. With regard to cultures, as with regard to romantic love-interests, love is blind, or at least makes one more indulgent of the love-interest's faults. Another possible reason is that a major source of funding over the past several years has become the Japanese government and Japanese corporate foundations which have endowed vast amounts of money for the study of Japan and its culture. Given the Japanese government's and corporate establishment's preoccupation with presenting Japan in a favorable light, a scholar's funding would be at risk if he or she were to bite the hand that feeds. Also to be considered is an academic's fear of losing research connections in Japan.
The nihonjinron phenomenon shows no signs of abating, but rather is growing at an alarming rate. A recent spate of nihonjinron publications purports to lay Japan's negative image in the world financial community at the hands of the Jews, a chilling echo of the not too distant past.
Since it does not appear that the Japanese academic community is about to level its aim at nihonjinron, it is incumbent upon Western scholars, not only of music but of all disciplines to abandon their reticence when dealing with shoddy methodology of any culture, particularly when that methodology has a not-so-subtle racism as its motivation.
[thanks to Karina Hahn for typing much of this text]