Western Art Music in Pre-Edo and Meiji Japan: Historical Reception, Cultural Change and Education

Abstract

Despite the fact that modern state music education in Japan privileges European music over traditional Japanese forms, such acceptance was a process that took over four centuries. Following the initial incursion of European art, music and culture with the arrival of the Jesuits in the sixteenth century, the country closed and was mostly isolated during the Edo period. Japan resumed its interaction with the Western world in the Meiji era in the middle of the nineteenth century. This chapter will compare the contexts and styles of music education before and after this period of enforced isolation in Japan. The first phase of Western music education was strongly related to the Catholic ideals of the Jesuits and was advanced as part of a coherent religious curriculum. It involved the full-scale transplanting of not only music but also the concomitant tradition of knowledge and pedagogy. It thus had an element of authenticity in Western terms that differed from later versions. From the Meiji era onwards, Western music was filtered through a Japanese cultural and pedagogic lens, and the resultant educational techniques and interpretation of works came to exemplify the hybridity that can still be seen today.