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Position

Former Visiting Professor (Research Associate at University of London, SOAS)

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Field

Javanese Traditional Music / Japanese Traditional Music

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Discovering Japan through folk song

I have been based at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, UK, for almost 30 years, though I'm retired now and am a Research Associate. My main research fields, geographically, are the traditional music of Japan and the traditional music of Java. I also research the methods of musical transmission in many different countries. My interest in Japanese folk song (min'y��) began in 1972 when I discovered a wonderful collection of field recordings in the library of the University of Michigan. Since 1977 I have visited Japan many times for fieldwork and other projects; in total, I have lived in Japan for more than ten years. I am very happy to return to Japan to be a visiting lecturer at TUFS as part of the initiatives of the Consortium for Asian and African Studies (CAAS). TUFS is wonderful!

My research also includes performing folk songs myself. I have been playing the shamisen for over 40 years, and I also play the shinobue (bamboo flute) and various Japanese drums. Naturally I have also learned to sing folk songs. Because I was virtually the only non-Japanese performing traditional folk songs and folk shamisen at the time, from 1977-81 I performed more than 40 times in Japan on television, stage and radio, and I was also sometimes an MC or a judge at folk song contests. (I hate being a judge: I just want people to enjoy the music without being judged!) In my classes, I will try to teach my students a bit of folk singing, and as we listen to recordings we will explore the meanings within their lyrics and the Japanese traditions and practices that inspired them.

But to provide a broader sense of music in Japan, I will also teach the students a little about Okinawan music, including trying to play the sanshin. To give them an even better live experience, I am also taking them to a folk song club (min'y�� sakaba), an Okinawan music class at an Okinawan restaurant in Fuch��, and to the Charanke Festival in Nakano, which features both Okinawan and Ainu music, dance and food! And a former TUFS student, now teaching at Gakugei University, will give a lecture about her research on the music of the Korean and Chinese communities in Japan.

As you might sense from the phrase Min'y�� wa kokoro no furusato ("Folk song is the heart's home town"), folk songs have been an expression of the lifestyle, customs, and ways of thinking of the Japanese through the ages. There are many types of folk songs--from festival songs and dance songs for the ancestral O-Bon festival to the songs of travelling entertainers--but I would like to focus in particular on "work songs," such as Hokkaido's S��ran Bushi, the songs of herring fishermen pulling in their nets, and Tottori's Kaigara Bushi, the song of scallop fishermen. These were originally sung by the fishermen without accompaniment, to keep up an efficient rhythm or help them forget the strain as they worked. The songs were then given accompaniments with instruments such as the shamisen, flute, and drums, and further refined for performance on the stage. There are many local "preservation societies" (hozonkai) that strive to keep old folk songs alive in their original form.

It is really a shame that many Japanese university students and other young people in Japan today know relatively little about Japan's folk songs. It is indeed important for Japanese students to look beyond Japan and support globalization, but we also need to know the culture and customs of our own country in order to understand those of others. At SOAS more than half of the students are not from the UK, and one third of the faculty members are from overseas. TUFS may not have quite as high a number of international students and staff, but I think that it displays the highest level of diversity among universities in Japan. I would like to see students place themselves in such an environment and delve deeply into the study of Japan and the world from various different perspectives.