JASPM 2005 in Hirosaki

It is increasingly colder each day here in Toyama, but the weather in Hirosaki (Aomori Prefecture) was freezing. I was in Hirosaki for a conference on popular-music studies, hosted by the Japanese Association for the Study of Popular Music. There were a variety of topics discussed there and scholarly presentations were conducted by researchers from various fields, not limiting to musicologist but including sociologists, economists, as well as promoters of popular music and a film-music record collector.

Perhaps due to the Japanese higher-education system, many presenters view the popular music sociologically, or they analyze it based on pre-conceived schemes created by American/European sociologists. I am not about to complain this idea but am more interested in musical discussions from historical musicologists, ethnomusicologists, or musical-theory specialists, as well.

One of the afternoon sessions was a "workshop" focused on "otaku" culture and music (actually it was closer to a symposium or three paper presentations and a brief question session). Interestingly, one of the panelists was otaku herself, and her discussion went on and on about what she was interested in for a decade or so. Her presentation occupied too much time of the session, but for me, observing the true "otaku" was interesting in its own.

Her presentation, from my understanding, dealt with the music production derived from "otaku" communities. These comminuties comprised from various otaku or a group of people who are avid fans of a particular cartoon or its character. They create a variety of cartoon-comic books, based on their favorite TV-anime or cartoon comics. New musical pieces have also been created based on these imagined, unofficial, original cartoon-comic books. Often the creators of the original TV show or manga writers have nothing to do with these versions of cartoon-comic, but a solid number of otaku supports are able to host even a staged show featuring their original songs.

The world of these otaku groups, I guess, originated in the TV anime shows such as Gundam or Macros, which I saw when I was kid, say, in 1979 to 1982. The fans of the Gundam program were one of the first group of people, who demanded the detailed description of the characters that appeared in the cartoon show. When the actual creators of the anime were unable to provide the details, the fans created them from their imagination.

The significance of the Macros show lies in the Chinese-looking character (I forgot her name, but she has a Chinese-sounding name also, Lin Min-Mei?), which was a singer and sung her original songs throughout the anime. Even though the story of the anime was not particularly musical but more like a robot-Sci Fi, always popular in Japan since the Astro Boy, the anime character's songs impacted me a great deal as well as many anime viewers at that time.

What I saw in otaku came from (1) their interests in details on anime characters and (2) singing by anime characters. When they cannot have these features in anime shows, they just make them up, based on their imagination and fantasy.

Also, they are really acts fast, as they create a network of people, some of whom can have access to music company or composing skills, others would have a economical foundation to create a dojinshi, or an original book-publication in the otaku market.

Japanese Ancient Music

Iwanami Koza: Nihon-no-ongaku, Ajia-no-ongaku (Iwanami Lecture Series: Japanese Music [and] Asian Music).  CD accompanied to the Appendix 1 Volume of the series.

This seven-volume collection of academic articles (all in Japanese) on Japanese and Asian musics, published by the Iwanami company, has two supplement volumes that come with compact discs.  These volumes are designed as research guidance and resources for researches on Asian musics.  The first volume is invaluable here as it includes recordings of Japanese ancient instruments heard nowhere but on this CD.

Especially important is the first track, demonstrating three types of the iwa-bue (stone-whistle), dating from the Jomon and Yayoi periods.  The instruments are so simple that they usually produce only a few pitches.  The tone color is also limited.  The type of music actually played on these period is unknown to us, due to the lack of information.  The performance on this disc, therefore, have to rely on the shape, construction, and sound of the flutes, which would give us basic information regarding the Japanese ancient music practices.  It is believed that such flutes were used by ancient Japanese people to communicate with their native gods.

The second track includes a performance of the dotaku (bronze bell).  This is also an important document.