The Rush of Modern Music

If you know how excited the Parisians were in their discovery of Japan, nearly the same emotions spill out of every corner of Taishō Japan. I have spent the last four weeks in Tokyo studying composers, music critics, and music educators who composed, wrote about, and taught music in Tokyo between 1910 and 1930. Alongside my work on these musical figures, I have come to recognize the significant impact that visual artists had in promoting and selling this music to a nation captivated by modernity.

MoMAT (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), currently has an exciting exhibition devoted to one of the leading visual artists of the Taishō and early Shōwa periods: Takehisa Yumeji (竹久夢二; 1884–1934). Described as the "Artist Who Defined His Era," it is not difficult to see why: his depictions of children capture that youthful sense of awe that we love to see, in ways that are the very definition of cuteness (look at how kawaii the little girl is with that one button popped open on her dress!). And the way in which he portrayed modern women quickly led Tokyo’s fashionable women to embrace modern trends. A little red lip, a slightly shy glance—these were not only artistic expressions that captured the period; they also helped pave the way for women to boldly claim their place in this new world.

Poster for Kodomo no tomo (1916)

Love me from the Complete Collection of Nakayama Shimpei (1930)

I have been excited to see this curated collection at MoMAT for quite some time because—alongside his friend Onchi Kōshirō's love of music (especially modern classical music being imported from Russia and France)—Takehisa not only consumed modern music but also helped bring vibrancy to new scores being published by Japanese composers.

Nakayama Shinpei (中山晋平; 1887–1952) is nearly as synonymous with the era musically as Takehisa was artistically. One of his first musical successes was a song called Katyusha's Song (1914), originally composed for a stage adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel Resurrection (1899). Everyone in 1914 knew this song. And everyone must have also known Takehisa's depiction of Katyusha, Tolstoy's protagonist.

Katyusha’s Song　Part I from the Shin-Kouta Song Series

The singer and actor, Matsui Sumako (松井須磨子; 1886–1919), was already a well-known from her role as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House which she performed on stage in 1911. But her fame exploded after her role in the theatrical adaptation of Tolstoy's novel. Her artistic life was always a source of intrigue to the general public, becoming even more so after she took her own life following her lover's death in 1918. Yet, she set the new standard through what would become Japan's first pop song.

Matsui Sumako [Public Domain, National Diet Library, Tokyo, Japan]

Recording of Matsui Sumako, likely from 1915.

The combination of visual art and music at this time in Japan is especially striking, in part because many visual artists were interested in Western musical traditions (there is even a photograph of Takehisa playing the lute at the opening of the current MoMAT exhibition), but also because Japan's emerging music industry needed visual material to help sell its products.

Takehisa's collaboration with Senow Music Scores was surely one of the ways in which both musicians and artists benefited from each other's ability to lure customers in through visual appeal, before they took the scores home to plunk out the tunes on that brand-new piano that had just entered the Japanese home.

OperaLa Traviata no. 53 Senow Music Scores (1917)

"How the Love Began," from Comic opertta: Le petit duc no. 163 Senow Music Scores (1920)

Serenade, no. 68 from Senow Music Scores (1918)

Here is a Japan that was, in some ways, already old in its modernization, which, for all intents and purposes, had been underway for over fifty years. The newest generation of the 1910s celebrated its ability to read Western sheet music and compose melodies that drew upon a combination of musical sensibilities, whether through tunes plucked on the koto or shamisen or through imported scores that had arrived on the latest boat from Paris.

It is especially noticeable that mixing West with East and East with West was a source of great enjoyment and delight, creating a space where new ideas could be juxtaposed with those that already existed. It was certainly a time when people on both sides found pleasure in learning something new from one another.