recreating traditional music in postwar japan: a prehistory of enka

This article was downloaded by: [NUS National University of Singapore]On: 06 August 2013, At: 00:05Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Japan ForumPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjfo20

Recreating traditional music in postwarJapan: a prehistory of enkaDeborah Shamoon aa Department of Japanese Studies , National University of SingaporePublished online: 05 Aug 2013.

To cite this article: Japan Forum (2013): Recreating traditional music in postwar Japan: a prehistory ofenka, Japan Forum, DOI: 10.1080/09555803.2013.824019

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2013.824019

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”)contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and ourlicensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publicationare the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor &Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independentlyverified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and usecan be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjfo20

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2013.824019

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Recreating traditional music inpostwar Japan: a prehistory of enka

DEB ORAH SH AMOON

Abstract: This article examines how enka evolved from the earlier genre ofkayokyoku, looking at the musical markers of Japaneseness and considering issuesof authenticity and originality in those earlier genres. The careers of composersKoga Masao and Hattori Ryoichi and singers Misora Hibari and Kasagi Shizukoshow the development of a hybrid style of popular song both before and after thePacific War, which would by the 1960s evolve into enka. As its core audience hasaged, enka has become increasingly rigid and concerned with nostalgia for a ‘pure’Japanese past, even though the music itself is quite distant from traditional musicalforms. Analysis of three movie musicals from the late 1940s and early 1950s,Ginza kankan girl, Carmen comes home and Janken girls, also demonstrates theperformance practices of popular music at the time, and the complex relationshipbetween popular music and national identity.

Keywords: enka, kayokyoku, popular music, popular song, Misora Hibari

Enka is a genre of popular music ubiquitous in contemporary Japan. Its core au-dience is older adults, stereotypically associated with rural areas and the workingclass. But everyone in Japan is at least a passive listener to enka, which appearsregularly on television and in films, piped into some stores and restaurants, andas a karaoke staple. More than just another genre of popular music, however,enka supposedly expresses the kokoro or heart and soul of Japan (Wajima 2010,p. 8). The ritualized performance, with the singers clad in kimono, and the com-position of the music are aimed to evoke ‘traditional’ Japan, or more specifically‘a nostalgically framed collective memory’ (Yano 2002, p. 5). However, enka ismodern music, complete with synthesized electronic sounds, and lush, pop-styleorchestration that is very different from any pre-Meiji style of music. The questionthen is, where did enka come from and, more specifically, what are the musicalcharacteristics that associate it with traditional music?

Enka did not evolve directly from any one pre-Meiji vocal performance style.The music that came to be called enka emerged from the popular songs of the

Japan Forum, 2013http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2013.824019Copyright C© 2013 BAJS

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2013.824019

2 Recreating traditional music in postwar Japan

early postwar years (1946–mid-1960s), called kayokyoku or ryukoka.1 This articlewill analyze the evolution of popular song from the Occupation era to the incep-tion of enka in the 1960s. I will look in particular at the careers of influentialcomposers Hattori Ryoichi (1907–1993) and Koga Masao (1904–1978), as wellas the stars who made their works famous, such as Kasagi Shizuko (1914–1985)and Misora Hibari (1937–1989), and argue that enka as a genre developed asthe war generation aged, in order to create an artificially constructed tradition.Hattori’s and Koga’s compositions from the 1920s through the 1950s highlightthe struggle of Japanese popular culture with concepts of authenticity, imitationand national identity within Imperial Japan and under the US Occupation. Whilethe genre of enka is both sincerely nationalist and obviously a modern, artificialconstruct, its roots are deeply tied to colonial ideology, namely, the attempt tocreate a new kind of Japanese music that sounded authentic and non-Western.

Okada writes, ‘Enka has always been considered a “conservative” type of song’(1991, p. 283). This is certainly true of enka today, since the genre has becomefossilized. However, the kayokyoku or popular song genre that preceded it was notat all conservative; rather, it borrowed freely from various musical trends popularin America in the 1940s and 1950s, brought to Japan by Occupation forces. Theseinfluences were mainly jazz and blues, but also French chanson, as well as rumba,samba and other South American beats popular worldwide in the years beforerock and roll. Composers such as Hattori and Koga who had spent the war yearsin Japan’s colonies also introduced a Chinese and Korean influence. While thepopular music of the Occupation period had some recognizably Japanese musicalelements, the audience and singers were mostly young, and not specificallyassociated with the self-conscious nationalism of later enka. Yano writes that theformation of enka as a genre occurred through a process of ‘collective forgetting’of earlier musical forms, labeling a new genre as ‘traditional’ (2002, p. 44). Butthis was a process not merely of forgetting pre-Meiji traditional music (by thispoint more than a century removed) but, more specifically, willfully forgettingthe music of the previous twenty years and the career trajectory of singers likeMisora Hibari, who came to her title as ‘Queen of Enka’ only relatively late in hercareer. The prehistory of enka, that is, the music of the postwar 1940s and ‘50s,shows a far more eclectic and international genealogy than the genre’s currentconservative image suggests. Traces of the hybrid roots of enka remain, andanxieties surrounding imitation and authenticity, traditional and foreign cultureare not new developments, but inherent in the genre from its inception.

Imitation and authenticity: the case of the monomane singer

The question of imitation appears repeatedly in discussions of Japanese culture,particularly in the realm of popular music. Much music in Japan across thetwentieth century, from classical to jazz to rock and pop, is demonstrably bor-rowed from the West, often unabashedly so. One of the clearest examples ofthis is the monomane (imitation) singer, who entertained the troops on US

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 3

military bases during the Occupation by performing imitations of popularAmerican singers. Many of these monomane singers also developed a Japanesefan base. Understanding the appeal of monomane for a domestic audience cansuggest more productive ways of regarding hybridity and national identity in pop-ular music, including enka.

Among the Occupation era monomane singers, some, such as Eri Chiemi(1937–1982) and Yukimura Izumi (b. 1937), first rose to stardom with covers ofwell-known American hits (‘Tennessee Waltz’ for Eri in 1952, and for Yukimura‘Til I Waltz Again With You’ in 1953, translated as ‘Omoide no warutsu’). Mis-ora Hibari began her career in 1946, and added a monomane element in 1948,performing for a domestic audience, rather than US troops, and the singer sheimitated was not an American, but Kasagi Shizuko, best known for her hit ‘Tokyoboogie-woogie’ and for her flamboyant stage persona. The 11-year-old Hibari2

was controversial for her imitation of an adult singer, not only because of theinfluence of American culture in Kasagi’s act, but because her act was consideredinappropriately sexual for a child.3 Unlike Eri and Yukimura, Hibari shed herassociations with monomane early in her career; by the time she became a filmstar as a young teen in the early 1950s she had stopped imitating Kasagi. As anadult, Hibari’s teary performance of enka in the 1960s helped define the genre,and she came to be seen as authentically representing the suffering of the war gen-eration for her fans (Tansman 1996). At first glance, Hibari’s early career, whenshe covered a wide variety of popular songs including many international hits,seems far removed from her ‘Queen of Enka’ persona. This change in her career,which mirrors the shift from kayokyoku to enka, suggests that classifications of‘inauthentic’ monomane and ‘authentic’ enka may not be the most productive lineof inquiry. How can we discuss the meaning of imitation in these films and in thesongs without falling into the debate on copying versus originality?

Covering a song does not necessarily mean a performer is lacking in creativ-ity or artistic expression. In an article on cover songs in the 1960s and 1970s,Yoneoka (2008) classifies her examples in terms of addition or subtraction ofcultural elements.4 She does this to avoid the pejorative label of pakuri (copy, rip-off), instead insisting that covers add something significant to the original song.She concludes, ‘the art of covering is far from simple copycatting or pakuri’, andcites a guide to J-pop by Otani Yukinori that ‘introduces J-pop “repacks” andtheir original versions, not to criticize them as pakuri, but rather to enjoy theirskill of adding new elements’ (Yoneoka 2008, p. 39). While true, this is not theonly measure of cross-cultural musical borrowing. There are situations in whichJapanese musicians are sometimes painfully aware of a lack of perceived authen-ticity. Atkins describes the contemporary jazz subculture in Japan as ‘consumedwith the idea of authenticity’ (2001, p. 23), as jazz has moved away from the com-mercial toward a highbrow audience. But there are instances in which copying isflaunted or even celebrated. Monomane singers are one example of the added valueof copying, with singers such as Eri and Yukimura building successful careers ontheir ability to imitate foreign-language hits.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


Simply acknowledging that a Japanese singer can bring new interpretation toher cover of a hit song, however, does not touch on some of the larger culturalimplications involved. After all, issues of imitation versus originality are long-standing in Japanese studies, and the massive importation of international musicin the Occupation era is inherently tied to Japan’s defeat by the United States.One way to approach the complex relationship of Japanese national identity andcopying or imitation in Occupation era music is through the concept of ‘mimeticexcess’ suggested by Taussig. He writes:

To ponder mimesis is to become sooner or later caught . . . in sticky webs ofcopy and contact, image and bodily involvement of the perceiver in the image,a complexity we too easily elide as nonmysterious, with our facile use of termssuch as identification, representation, expression, and so forth – terms whichsimultaneously depend upon and erase all that is powerful and obscure in thenetwork of associations conjured by the notion of the mimetic.

(Taussig 1993, p. 21)

In problematizing or re-mystifying the concept of imitation Taussig examinescases of colonized indigenous cultures in Latin America and Africa that createdtotemic objects copying the white colonizers, which Taussig reads as attemptingto appropriate the power of the colonizers for themselves. He sees copying in thisregard as a means of exerting mastery over the Other, not merely a demonstrationof inferiority in the face of colonization. Taussig (pp. 206–207) also caststhe West’s fascination with bringing technology to the colonized Other as anobsessive desire to impress the ‘savages’ with the superiority of their technology,a desire which can outstrip the interest of the natives themselves. The copying ofWestern culture or cultural artifacts is both unsettling to the Western viewer, andnecessary to reinscribe patterns of cultural dominance.

Taussig defines mimetic excess as:

an appreciation of mimesis as an end in itself that takes one into the magicalpower of the signifier to act as if it were indeed real, to live in a different waywith the understanding that artifice is natural . . . the power to both doubleyet double endlessly, to become any Other and engage the image with realitythus imagized . . . the freedom to live reality as really made up.

(Taussig 1993, p. 255)

Taussig’s concept of mimetic excess is particularly helpful in considering the mono-mane singer entertaining American troops during the Occupation by imitatingpopular American singers. On the one hand, this performance can be read as theultimate form of abasement in the wake of defeat: young Japanese women singingforeign songs learned phonetically for the gratification of the (male) Americanoccupiers. On the other hand, with Taussig’s characterization in mind, monomanecan be read as an attempt to appropriate American culture through virtuoso per-formances of imitation. The popularity of monomane singers with the Japanese

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 5

public and not just GIs seems to bear this out. Unlike the serious jazz musi-cian Atkins (2001) describes, the monomane singer, in gleefully disregarding thedistinction between copy and original, participates in the higher-status culture.

Hybridity and national identity: Kasagi Shikuzo, Hattori Ryoichiand Koga Masao

While Hibari began her career as a monomane singer, her performances as a whole-some teen and as the ‘Queen of Enka’ are still marked by mimetic excess, whichsuggests the various stages of her career are not wholly dissimilar. Furthermore,the genres of music Hibari sang, both kayokyoku and enka, are fundamentallyhybrid forms. The hybridity of kayokyoku is obvious: in the newfound freedom ofthe early postwar years, composers experimented with various Western musicaltrends popular at the time. However, the break with wartime military propagandamusic (gunka) was not complete, despite efforts to suppress it. Although theOccupation government outlawed these propaganda songs, the style endured asmany of the same singers and composers continued to work in the early postwaryears (Kitanaka 2003). This can be seen in the careers of some key figures whosepopularity spanned wartime and postwar years: Kasagi Shizuko, the singer Hi-bari imitated, and the composers who wrote many of their hits and shaped thedevelopment of enka, Hattori Ryoichi and Koga Masao.

While Kasagi Shizuko is best remembered for embodying the sexualized ex-cesses of Occupation era entertainment, her career, like Hattori’s and Koga’s,began before the Pacific War. In 1927 she auditioned for the Takarazuka Re-vue training school, but was rejected on the grounds that she was too short andskinny; instead, in the same year she joined the rival all-girl revue Shochiku ShojoKagekidan (SSK) (Sakoguchi 2011, p. 24). Like the Takarazuka, the SSK dividedthe troupe into specialists in male or female parts; Kasagi debuted as a player offemale roles (musumeyaku) under the name Mikasa Shizuko, although in 1935when the emperor’s younger brother reached his majority and was given the namePrince Mikasa, her name was changed to Kasagi out of deference (Sakoguchi2011, p. 27). Through the late 1930s, she came under increasing surveillanceand occasional censorship for her suggestive act, and in 1939 she left the SSKto perform on her own. Despite the overt influence of American jazz in her act,Kasagi continued to perform during the war years, traveling around the countryand performing for Japanese troops. As Mitsui (1997) points out, in the 1930sjazz was not outlawed but the government tried to make it more domesticatedand less erotic.

In 1938, Kasagi met jazz composer Hattori Ryoichi, who would write many ofher postwar hits, including ‘Tokyo Boogie-Woogie’. Hattori was trained in bothWestern classical music and jazz in the 1920s, and sought to combine aspectsof both to create a new kind of Asian jazz. One of the most prolific and influ-ential composers of the 1920s and 1930s, he helped to change jazz songs fromsolely imports or translations to domestically produced and consumed songs that

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


gestured toward tradition (Atkins 2001, p. 133, Bourdaghs 2012, p. 40). Duringthe war years, Hattori was based in Shanghai, where he composed for Ri Koranin the style of ‘yellow music’ or Chinese jazz.5 While Hattori’s stated goal was tocreate Japanese jazz (Hattori 2003, p. 276), a Chinese sound was often part of hiscompositions even in the postwar years. In the freedom and cultural confusion ofthe early postwar era, or more specifically kasutori culture, which Dower definesas ‘a commercial world dominated by sexually oriented entertainments’ (1999, p.148), the upbeat tempo and mildly suggestive, nearly nonsensical lyrics of ‘TokyoBoogie-Woogie’ found a ready audience. Mitsui (1997, p. 164) also notes thenatural fit of gitaigo (onomatopoeia) and the English word boogie-woogie.

‘Tokyo Boogie-Woogie’, which Kasagi first performed in 1947, is generallyconsidered an early postwar example of Japanese imitation of American mu-sical forms. However, Kasagi encompassed competing local and internationaldiscourses: unlike monomane singers who covered established hits, her songs werecomposed specifically for her. Moreover, Kasagi’s origins in Osaka remained afixed part of her star identity, and she often sang lyrics in the Kansai dialect.While elements of her stage act represent the exotic, Westernized, sexualizedbody, Kasagi’s persistent use of Kansai dialect pulls her toward a strongly local-ized Japanese identity.

Furthermore, musical borrowing and copying in the early postwar era was farmore complex than simply Japanese composers or singers imitating Americanforms. Waseda (2004) describes songs written by GIs which consciously includeJapanese elements, as well as discussing the importance of Hawaiian Nisei jazzsingers who in a self-Orientalizing move emphasized their Americanness andpretended not to know Japanese well. Hosokawa (1999), in an article on rumbain Japan, argues that the importation of South American rhythms was not passive,but employed different strategies of production and consumption in order tomake sense of local experience. Furthermore, the borrowing can go both ways:as Furmanovsky (2008) mentions, ‘Tokyo boogie-woogie’ was covered later byHarry Belafonte. There are other examples of Japanese songs becoming overseashits, perhaps the most famous being Sakamoto Kyu’s 1961 hit ‘Ue o muite aruko’(I’ll walk looking up), better known in English as ‘Sukiyaki’.6 All of which is tosay that, with songs such as ‘Tokyo boogie-woogie’, the layers of imitation arethick: first of a distinctly American form, then by other Japanese singers copyingKasagi’s distinctive performance, then later by an American singer again. In thiscase, issues of authenticity become lost in the endless funhouse mirrors of copyingand imitation, replaced instead by mimetic excess, a knowing wink to the audiencethat all popular culture is made up.

Like Hattori, Koga Masao also sought to create a new kind of Japanese popularmusic influenced by both jazz and mainland Asian sounds. Raised in colonialKorea, he composed military songs during the Pacific War. After the war, Kogawas followed by persistent rumors that he was Korean himself, and some in thezainichi (resident Korean) community in Japan claimed him as a countryman,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 7

despite his protests to the contrary (Mori 2009, p. 222). As many zainichi celebri-ties in the 1950s and 1960s did in fact attempt to hide their Korean identities andpass as Japanese, these kinds of rumors are not uncommon: Misora Hibari wasalso a target of this rumor. Koga’s case seems much more unlikely than Hibari’s,but, as Bourdaghs (2012) convincingly argues, the truth of their ethnicity mattersless than the reason for the persistence of these rumors. He writes:

For many Japanese, it seems to me, the Hibari-as-Korean rumor provides onemechanism for dealing with both the traumatic memories of the past and anx-ieties about the present. Passing it along mobilizes the repressed memoriesof lost empire . . . . Japan’s imperial past and its position within Asia obtainshadowy acknowledgment.

(Bourdaghs 2012, p. 83)

This might be said of Koga’s compositions as well. Even as Koga and Hattoriclaimed to be creating new Japanese pop music, their work was frequently influ-enced by Chinese and Korean sounds as well. While the popular songs of theOccupation period generally do not refer to former colonies directly, many ges-ture toward the foreign in Japan, such as songs about Nagasaki and the JapaneseAlps or locations such as Hawaii and San Francisco.

Koga also composed two of Hibari’s biggest hits, ‘Yawara’ (1964) and ‘Kanashiisake’ (Mournful sake, 1966), sentimental ballads which were seminal in definingenka as a genre in the 1960s. While Hattori’s upbeat, boogie-woogie tunes belongto the pre-history of enka, Koga is considered one of the first enka composers(Wajima 2010, p. 84). The distinctive downbeat, melancholy sound of his musicis known as ‘Koga Melody’ (Koga merodı) (Yano and Hosokawa 2008, p. 350).However, despite enka’s status as ‘pure’ Japanese song, and despite Koga’s ownconservative, nationalist politics (Mori 2009, p. 221), the basis of this music is ahybrid of American, Chinese and Korean sounds, in addition to Japanese. Fromits roots in kayokyoku to its development in the 1960s, enka has always been ahybrid genre.

Musical markers of Japaneseness

Hattori, Koga and other composers like them set out to create modern Japanesepopular music. But what does that mean specifically? What make their musicsound Japanese are both compositional techniques and the use of specific vocaltechniques by the singer. This section will look at how composers gestured towardtradition while still creating modern music.

Before looking more closely at these musical forms, it is useful to understandhow kayokyoku developed out of earlier forms of popular song in the early twenti-eth century. Western music entered Japan at the start of the Meiji period (1868),and mastery of Western musical forms was considered vital to the modernization

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


of the country. Western music spread through the populace officially throughmilitary bands and music education in primary schools (Yano and Hosokawa2008, p. 347). Before Meiji, musical forms were tied to social class and localidentity; there was no single genre of ‘Japanese music’ appropriate for all ages,expressing a unified national identity (Yano and Hosokawa 2008, p. 346). Schoolsongs (shoka) and military songs (gunka) were composed as part of the Meijigovernment’s efforts to mobilize a patriotic citizenry, while purposely containingelements of Western music theory and references to pre-Meiji popular song.7 Bythe 1920s and 1930s, jazz had gained a substantial audience, and, because of pri-mary school music education, the sounds of Western-style music were becomingas familiar as native forms, at least for urban audiences. At the same time, musicbecame a commodity with the widespread availability of the phonograph and theestablishment of music recording and sales as an industry (Wajima 2010, p. 22).

While military songs dominated through the late 1930s and early 1940s, thepopular music that emerged postwar in the late 1940s blended jazz-inflectedsounds from a wide variety of international hits with musical features that recalledthe fusion of Japanese and Western styles used in prewar school songs. Thiseclectic, hybrid style of popular song was simply called kayokyoku until the mid-1960s, when successive ‘booms’ (for electric guitar, rockabilly, the Beatles, GroupSounds and folk) splintered the popular music market and created rifts thatsplit along generational lines (Stevens 2008, pp. 43–44). The term kayokyokucontinued to be used to describe music popular among young people, while theirparents needed a new term to distinguish the now less popular music they favored,and so the term enka came into general circulation (Stevens 2008, p. 43).

One of the musical markers of Japaneseness in school songs, kayokyoku andenka is the pentatonic or five-tone scale. European classical music, and by ex-tension much of Western popular music, is based on a seven-tone or heptatonicscale. Because one can start on any note and create a heptatonic scale, ratherthan calling notes by absolute pitch names (A, B, C, D, etc.) it is more useful tothink of them as numbers or degrees, one through seven. By contrast, pre-MeijiJapanese musical forms tend to be organized in three-note tetrachords (Tokitaand Hughes 2008, p. 19). Composers in the Meiji period, in an attempt to fitthese older modes into Western classical music theory, incorrectly described themas pentatonic (Okada 1991). A new five-tone scale was created and labeled ‘tra-ditional’: yonanuki (missing fourth and seventh) or, more specifically, yonanukicho-onkai (pentatonic major) and yonanuki tan’onkai (pentatonic minor) (Tokitaand Hughes 2008, p. 20).8 There are some variations – sometimes the second andsixth degrees are skipped. The yonanuki modes are the primary marker of Japane-seness in both kayokyoku and enka; yonanuki minor in particular is a central featureof Koga Melody. Hughes notes that, while yonanuki major and yonanuki minor

are very rare in traditional music, they are the two traditional modes closest tothe Western major and minor modes respectively, hence the easiest to harmo-nize. This is one hybrid feature that made such songs instantly appealing to a

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 9

populace still well familiar with, and often emotionally wedded to, traditionalmusic yet increasingly exposed to Western music through the education systemand media.

(Hughes 2008, p. 43)

Yonanuki minor continues to be used in enka as an identifiable sign of Japanese-ness, but the mode itself, like the genre as a whole, is a modern invention.

In addition to the pentatonic scale, there are several other compositional andperformance techniques associated with enka, which also appear in kayokyoku. Inpopular music of the early postwar period, the meaning of the words is important,so, as with later enka, singers have a tendency to deliver the lyrics in a spokenrhythm, rather than strictly following musical meter, which sounds as if they areleaning into the notes or sometimes half-speaking. The lyrics often use groupingsof five or seven syllables, rather than rhyme or accented meter, evoking centuries-old poetic structures.

There is also a tendency to highlight one voice with the melody, rather thanusing several voices and harmony. Pre-Meiji Japanese music in general is mono-phonic, that is, based on a single melody, with an emphasis on ornamentationin vocal performance (Tokita and Hughes 2008, p. 24). In kayokyoku and enka,singers are usually solo; even when there are duets between a man and a woman of-ten both voices sing the melody. The melody often steps up and down through ev-ery note of the scale, which emphasizes the pentatonic quality of the song. In termsof vocal quality associated with Japaneseness, singers usually make a clear distinc-tion between jigoe (chest voice) and uragoe (head voice or falsetto). Singers also fre-quently use a form of ornamentation (kobushi) called yuri, wavering just above andbelow the true pitch, intensifying the longer a pitch is held (Yano 2002, p. 111).

Early postwar kayokyoku used many of these techniques, which were later morepronounced in enka. For instance, Misora Hibari’s 1949 hit ‘Kanashiki kuchibue’(Sorrowful whistle), composed by Manjome Tadashi (1905–1968) in A minor,approximates both yonanuki minor and the inaka-bushi or yo scale, with the sec-ond and sixth degrees missing, associated with folk song (min’yo).9 Her 1951song, ‘Echigojishi no uta’ (The Echigo lion song), also composed by Manjome, iscentered around yonanuki minor. Hibari sings in a tight, nasal voice and empha-sizes the first and second tones rather than the arpeggio (1–3–5) of Western music.Another song that uses yonanuki minor is the 1952 hit ‘Geisha waltz’, composedby Koga Masao and sung by Kagurazaka Hanko (1931–1995), a geisha turnedpop singer. In this fairly typical song of impossible love between a geisha andher patron, the mandolin approximates the shamisen. However, the song con-tains English loanwords, noticeably ‘cheek dance’ (chıku dansu, that is, dancingcheek-to-cheek) which imply a contemporary setting. Like ‘Geisha waltz’, manysongs are ambiguously both traditional and modern. The 1948 hit ‘Yu no machierejı’ (Elegy for a hot springs town, music by Koga, sung by Omi Toshiro) beginswith a poetic invocation of the mountains around the hot spring resorts of Izu,a rural setting. But, as the singer laments the woman married to someone else,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


he sings about strumming his guitar, a modern instrument. Koga composed thesong to approximate to yonanuki minor. The song also is not divided evenly intoeight-bar phrases – the meter changes briefly from 4/4 to 2/4 to accommodate anatural emphasis in the lyrics. In all these songs, their hybrid nature is evident inboth the lyrics and the composition, as most only approximate yonanuki or otherpentatonic scales, with the ‘missing’ tones appearing occasionally.

Enka inherited its characteristic musical features from these early postwarsongs, not directly from older sources. But early postwar kayokyoku also con-tained many non-traditional elements. Singers for the most part wore Western-style clothing. Only Western instruments were used. Most noticeably, the topicsof songs were not limited, as is common in modern enka, to laments for lost loveand invocations of premodern or prewar lifestyles. The purpose of popular songin the difficult early postwar years was largely escapist: for that reason many ofthe songs are intentionally cheerful. For instance, the song ‘Aoi sanmyaku’ (Bluemountain range, 1949, music by Hattori, sung by Fujiyama Ichiro and Nara Mit-sue) expresses young people’s hopes of starting a new life and putting the warexperience behind them. The lyrics emphasize leaving behind bombed-out ruins(yakeato) and sad memories, looking forward instead to a bright future; the finalline is ‘The bells ring for us young people’. This kind of optimistic tone is fittingfor the early postwar years but quite different from enka, which is almost alwaysmelancholy.

While enka uses many of the compositional and performance techniques ofearly postwar kayokyoku, the genre is much more self-consciously traditional.Singers, especially women, tend to wear kimono when performing. The vocalornamentation is often even more pronounced. However, these aspects can comeacross as overdetermined, especially since the instrumental settings rely so heavilyon electronic effects, lush orchestration and sentimental flourishes more closelyassociated with 1970s easy listening than the jazzier sound of earlier kayokyoku.One example is the song ‘Take’ (Bamboo) sung by Kitajima Saburo, released in1997 and composed by Kitajima himself under the pen name Hara Joji. In theopening bars, a shakuhachi weaves in and out of the dense orchestration, whileWestern instruments, mainly violin and guitar, evoke the shamisen in repeatedstaccato notes before dissolving into tied notes, producing harmonies character-istic of Western music. The traditional instruments are no more than flourishesset against a standard pop orchestration mix.In short, enka, despite its claim to express the ‘authentic’ heart of Japan, is everybit as artificially contrived as the jidaigeki (historical dramas) it often accompa-nies. Like the monomane singer’s, this artifice is flaunted and, far from being animpediment to viewing or listening pleasure, it makes the older forms relevant to amodern audience. However, what is interesting, and what seems particular to thedevelopment of enka as a genre, is how quickly and thoroughly the postwar popu-lar songs were supplanted, both for fans and for performers. Since the emergenceof commercial teen culture in the 1950s, young people have used popular music

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 11

to distinguish themselves from older generations, in Japan as elsewhere. We nowexpect that new musical genres appealing to new generations will emerge everydecade or so, and that most people will favor into old age the music they enjoyedas teenagers or young adults. However, it seems that, in the shift from kayokyokuto enka, the music itself actually changed substantially as the fans and performersaged. The war generation favored upbeat, optimistic songs as well as interna-tional hits in the difficult early postwar years, but by the 1970s they gravitatedmore toward songs that emphasize Japanese culture (however superficially).

Popular music on film

The previous sections discussed enka’s hybrid sound and its roots in early post-war popular music, which encompassed a wide variety of national influences.The hybridity of popular song was evident during and immediately after the USOccupation, when kayokyoku was often used in film as shorthand for a debased,sexualized popular culture, even as the films served as star vehicles for the singers.The position of popular music in this era, poised between East and West, andbetween high and low cultures, can be seen in the movie musicals of the late 1940sand early 1950s, many of which stage the anxiety of art versus commerce, and inwhich national identity is filtered through the performances of female stars suchas Kasagi Shizuko and Misora Hibari. This section will look at three musicalsfrom this era, Ginza kankan musume (Ginza kankan girl, 1949, dir. Shima Koji),Karumen kokyo ni kaeru (Carmen comes home, 1951, dir. Kinoshita Keisuke)and Janken musume (Janken girls,10 1955, dir. Sugie Toshio), all examples of thedeployment of popular music both to represent and to assuage anxieties sur-rounding hybridity and national identity. At the same time, not coincidentally,these films all revel in mimetic excess, referencing the stars’ singing careers andself-reflexively winking at the audience about the films’ own artifice.

Ginza kankan girl

Ginza kankan girl is a breezy romp through a sanitized version of Occupation-erapopular culture, in which moralizing admonitions against the debauched Ginzascene are continually undercut by the film’s self-reflexive celebration of its stars.Kasagi Shizuko and Takamine Hideko (1924–2010) star as Haru and Aki. Thetwo girls, along with a friend, Shirai Tetsuo (Kishii Akira, 1910–1965), take upcabaret singing in Ginza to earn some much-needed cash. Haru and Aki board atthe house of retired rakugo performer Shinso, played by real-life rakugo performerKokontei Shinso V (1890–1973) (Figure 1). The plot is slight, little more than askeleton on which to hang a series of songs and slapstick routines, followed by arakugo performance by Shinso. However, the tension between high and low artis a consistent theme, expressed through the uneasy relationship Haru and Akihave with the title song.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


Figure 1 Publicity still for Ginza kankan girl.

As in many movie musicals in the 1940s and 1950s, the song came first. Thesong ‘Ginza kankan girl’ was written by Hattori Ryoichi with lyrics by SaekiTakao and released in 1949, four months before the film. On the recording,Takamine sings solo although she was primarily an actress, not a singer; in thefilm, Kasagi and Kishii join her. Hattori gives the song a boogie-woogie rhythm,but the upbeat, cheery melody contrasts with the references to prostitution in thelyrics. The title also alludes obliquely to prostitution: in English translations ofthe song, the word kankan is often rendered as ‘can-can’, but the girl in the songis not a can-can dancer; rather, the implication is that she is a panpan girl, orprostitute servicing American GIs. The lyrics describe her hanging around Ginzain flashy clothes, grinning restlessly as she looks at her watch, and declaringshe won’t be fooled by any man. She sings: ‘Ginza is my jungle/I’m not scaredof tigers or wolves’ (Nobarasha 2002, pp. 102–103). Despite Takamine’s light-hearted, innocent delivery, the song’s lyrics hint at the sexualized culture of theOccupation era, called kasutori bunka (moonshine culture). Taking its name fromthe black market liquor favored by the down-and-out, kasutori bunka becamea slang term for the sleazy, decadent popular culture of the Occupation period(Dower 1999, p. 148, Mansfield 2009, p. 211).

The ambiguity of the song ‘Ginza kankan girl’ is appropriate to the film, whichtames the erotic aspects of kasutori culture for mass consumption. Aki and Haruaspire to be artists: Haru a pianist and Aki a painter. They are not panpan girls,

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 13

and the provocative aspects of Kasagi’s extra-diegetic star persona are eclipsedby Takamine’s more wholesome character. In the film, Shirai convinces the girlsthat singing in cabarets is respectable by telling them that it is art (geijutsu).The three of them are very successful in their ‘art’, and they make quite a lotof money singing ‘Ginza kankan girl’. However, Aki’s boyfriend Busuke (HaidaKatsuhiko 1911–1982) objects to her singing in bars. Busuke, the conductor ofa company choir, represents the more sedate, respectable kind of music that isoften contrasted with the racier popular music in musicals of this era.11 Althoughhe is in danger of being laid off, Busuke refuses to switch from classical to popularmusic just to earn money, highlighting the musical conflict in the film. Writing onKurosawa’s films in this period, Bourdaghs (2012, p. 27) says, ‘If popular dancemusic presents the threat of castration, classical music signifies the restoration ofmasculine subjectivity’. Aki tries to defend herself by repeating Shirai’s argument,that their song is ‘art’, but the dangers of kasutori culture are revealed when Busukesuffers a beating in an attempt to protect Aki from drunken patrons. Seeing thatBusuke was right, Aki agrees to quit and the implication is that they will getmarried. Thus the film ends with the threat of kasutori culture, symbolized bypopular song and its associations with violence and sexual promiscuity, at leastnominally repudiated.

The heavy-handed message about the dangers of popular music is undercut,however, by several moments of mimetic excess, in which the film winkinglyindulges in self-reflexivity. In one comic scene, Aki and Haru stumble across amovie being filmed on location and get themselves roles as stand-ins. This scenepoints to the inherent silliness of movie-making, as production stops over anuncooperative dog and Haru, acting as a stunt double, gets tossed into a fountain.Another moment of self-reflexivity occurs at the end – when Aki and Busuke fightoff thugs in a Ginza alley, the screen is dominated by a huge sign advertising aHollywood film.12 These reminders of the artificiality of cinema give the film aplayful tone, making it hard to take the moralizing about popular music seriously.

Also part of this self-reflexivity are the moments when Kasagi and Shinsoperform as themselves, gesturing broadly towards their real star personas outsidethe film. In one scene, Haru sings ‘Jungle boogie’, reprising her famous role fromKurosawa’s Yoidore tenshi (Drunken angel, 1948). The camera imitates the scenefrom the other film in showing a close-up of Kasagi’s face as she opens her mouthwide to sing the animal-like howls of the song (Figure 2). ‘Jungle boogie’ wascomposed by Hattori, with lyrics by Kurosawa himself, to represent the sexualizedabandon of kasutori culture.13 Ginza kankan girl also gestures towards Kasagi’ssexualized star persona in the opening scene, in which Aki and Haru share a singleoutfit while talking with Busuke through their second-storey bedroom window,performing a kind of reverse striptease as they take turns wearing their only niceshirt. The final scene contains another moment of self-reflexivity, with a lengthyrakugo performance by Shinso. As this was one of his only recorded performances,the film itself has become a memorial to his art. Indeed, the entire film seems to

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


Figure 2 Screen shot of Kasagi Shizuko in Drunken angel.

be little more than an excuse to throw several popular stars together; it is morelike a variety show than a narrative film. The fact that the performers and thesongs they sing are already popular obviates the need for more than the barestof narratives to introduce them. In this film, and many others like it from thisera, Kasagi and Shinso engage in mimetic excess by playing themselves, and thepleasure for the audience lies not in entering a fictional world, but in recognizingthe parallels between the actors and their extra-diegetic selves.

Carmen comes home

The use of popular music to symbolize the clash between tradition and modernityis even clearer in the satire Carmen comes home, directed by Kinoshita Keisuke(1912–1998). Takamine stars as Lily Carmen, a Tokyo striptease artiste whovisits her rural hometown along with a colleague named Maya Akemi (KobayashiToshiko, b. 1932). Carmen comes home, which opened in 1951, was Japan’s firstcolor film. Because the technology for color film was still experimental and lightingwas a major issue, the entire film was shot outdoors on location in the village ofKitakaruizawa, at the foot of Mt Asama in Nagano prefecture. The film stagesthe intrusion of kasutori culture into rural life in a very literal way and satirizesthe clash between the new forms of entertainment (both popular music andstriptease), embodied in Carmen’s stubborn insistence that the villagers see herperformance as art.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 15

In an interview, Kinoshita says the following on the role of striptease in thefilm:

At the time Carmen was written, Japan was still occupied by Allied troops. Andthe Americans, in particular – to make us Japanese feel happier – started en-couraging strip shows here. Before that, of course, it was considered immoralfor women to do anything like display their breasts in public, and so more tra-ditional people felt that something extremely disagreeable had become popularin the country. I too started to worry about these new, looser morals. So I wrotethis story about a girl born out in the countryside who, because she was kickedin the head by a cow in her youth, is a little on the slow side mentally. She leavesto make her way in the big city, and, in Tokyo, turns to stripping. Actually, inthe world of stripping, she’s something of a star. But Carmen believes that bybecoming a stripper, she’s now a great artist.

(Birnbaum 1999, p. 238)

Within the film, the struggle over the distinction between art and commercial en-tertainment, and between traditional and foreign culture, is symbolized throughboth striptease and popular music. While most of the villagers are happily se-duced by Carmen’s glamour, standing on the side of tradition are her father(Sakamoto Takeshi 1899–1974), the principal of the local elementary school (RyuChishu 1904–1993) and the school music teacher, Taguchi Haruo (Sano Shuji1912–1978). The principal periodically breaks out in nagauta, a genre of narrativesong accompanied by shamisen, originally associated with kabuki but from thenineteenth century on also performed as concert pieces. Although he sings unac-companied, the principal’s musical taste clearly marks his allegiance to traditionalculture. Taguchi, who is blind, recalls the many men who returned injured fromthe war, as well as the symbolic loss of masculinity in the wake of defeat andoccupation. He composes a school song titled ‘Soba no hana saku’ (The buck-wheat flowers blossom, actually written by Kinoshita Keisuke’s younger brotherChuji), which the schoolchildren sing throughout the film as a counterpoint tothe kasutori culture Carmen represents.

In one early scene, the rivalry between serious and popular music plays outliterally. On sports day at the school, as Carmen and Akemi arrive late, the bandplays an instrumental version of ‘Ringo no uta’ (The apple song, 1946). This wasthe first kayokyoku hit released under the Occupation (sung by Namiki Michiko,with lyrics by Sato Hachiro and music by Manjome Tadashi). Although the lyrics(not sung in this scene) are quite innocent, in this context the song represents themodern, urban culture intruding in the remote village. The band play the songfaster and faster, driving themselves into an exhausted frenzy, foreshadowing theirlater performance accompanying Carmen’s striptease. Next, Taguchi debuts hisschool song on the organ after a reverential introduction by the principal. Theperformance is disrupted, however, when one of the musicians pinches Akemi; she

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


Figure 3 Screen shot of Carmen comes home: the climax of Carmen and Akemi’s striptease.

leaps up in consternation and her skirt falls off. As the crowd erupts in laughter,non-diegetic background music in a kayokyoku style plays as Taguchi storms off,humiliated.

To make up for this disaster, Carmen arranges to give a demonstration ofher art, the performance of which drives the plot of the second half of the film.As she and her friends prepare for the show, Carmen insists ever more stronglythat what she is doing is art, although her message is satirically undercut bybanners advertising her show as ‘naked art’ (hadaka geijutsu). The performance,by Carmen and Akemi, is suitably frenetic, although the film stops short ofshowing them naked, of course, through strategically framed close-ups that showno more than their legs to the knees (Figure 3). It is also interesting to note thatthe entire village turns out to see Carmen and Akemi’s ‘naked art’. This is notthe gendered space typically associated with striptease. Cutaways to the audienceshow toothless old men, old women chewing on rolls, stocky farm girls andchildren all watching the show together. Of course, this is for comedic effect, butit also makes the event seem more like a village festival than a trip to Tokyo’s sleazyunderworld.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 17

Although Carmen’s father and the school principal refuse to attend, theperformance does not cause a larger conflict, and the film ends with a quickresolution: Carmen gives the proceeds from her show to the school to buy a neworgan, appeasing both the principal and Taguchi, and she promises to visit againsoon. The film ends with the schoolchildren singing Taguchi’s song intercut withshots of Carmen and Akemi waving happily as they ride the train out of town.Although Kinoshita in the quote above seems to side with Carmen’s father inbelieving that this so-called art is no more than pandering, the easy resolution ofthe film suggests a more nuanced social criticism. The film ends with everyonegetting their way: Taguchi’s pride is restored, while Carmen enjoys a successfulperformance and is never forced to abandon her art (unlike Aki in Ginza kankangirl). The villagers do not really have to accept her, because she leaves at the end;no minds are changed or lessons learned. In this struggle between tradition andkasutori culture, no one emerges the clear winner or loser.

But what in this film is marked as traditional culture, and to what purpose?‘The buckwheat flowers blossom’, which supposedly represents tradition, iscomposed in the style of school songs (shoka), a genre invented in the Meijiperiod based on Western musical styles, and used as propaganda through thewar years (Yano and Hosokawa 2008, pp. 346–347). The vast difference betweenthis song and actual traditional music is highlighted by the principal’s repeatedoutbursts of nagauta. But while nagauta may be authentically Japanese, it doesnot lend itself to the kind of mass performance by the villagers and schoolchildrenthat helps to define the village as a cultural unit. This is one reason Westernmusical styles became widespread in the Meiji period: traditional genres suchas nagauta were not deemed appropriate as patriotic anthems, particularly forschoolchildren, who were instead taught newly composed songs in a Westernstyle (Okada 1991, p. 285).

Moreover, the scenery around Kitakaruizawa is not that of the sort of rice-farming village associated with traditional Japan. Rather than rice paddies, thefilm highlights an Alpine landscape, with many shots of horses grazing (Figure 4).Many popular songs (and the movie musicals that followed) in this period evokehorse farms in the mountains as well as other similarly exotic locales withinJapan, such as Nagasaki or Hokkaido (Kitanaka 2003, pp. 26–32). Some ex-amples of songs featuring similar mountainous settings include ‘Aoi sanmyaku’(Blue mountain range, 1949), ‘Ano oka koete’ (Over the hills, 1951), ‘Makibano hanayomesan’ (Bride of the pasture, 1951) and ‘Arupusu no makiba’ (Thepasture in the Alps, 1951). This desire to find the exotic within Japan can be seenas double mirroring, not only of musical form but of setting as well, domesticatingthe exotic by copying.

If even traditional culture in this film is implicated in mimetic excess, Carmenherself is even more so. In her striptease act at the end of the film, she appears onstage in spit curls and with a rose clenched in her teeth, like her namesake fromthe Bizet opera (Figure 5). She warbles out ‘Ah, Carmen!’ in a fake operatic style

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


Figure 4 Screen shot of Carmen comes home: Carmen’s father herding horses – is this traditionalJapan?

before dancing with Akemi. Again, this is imitation in its most playful mode. Thecharacter of Carmen as the epitome of an overtly sexualized, seductive womanwas well known in Japan at the time, and not only from the opera. In 1947, Hattoricomposed two musicals, Jazz Carmen and Tokyo Carmen, both starring KasagiShizuko (Hattori 2003, pp. 220–232).

This knowing wink towards Western high culture reminds us that stripteaseis also a copy of Western culture, and at the time a very recent import. Thefirst precursor to striptease in 1947 was so-called picture-frame nude shows(gakubuchi nudo sho), in which semi-clothed women, posed like European oilpaintings, stood inside picture frames (Dower 1999, pp. 151–152). Carmen’sinsistence that striptease is art reflects its appearance in Japan just a few yearsprevious. The nudes in picture frames are also a striking instance of mimeticexcess, an appropriation of Western high culture to justify commercial profit andsexual gratification. As with kayokyoku in general, or Carmen’s imitation of heroperatic namesake, the purpose is not to create a copy as good as or better thanthe original, but to reveal all culture as made up and infinitely manipulable. In theend, the reconciliation between traditional rural and modern urban culture comes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 19

Figure 5 Screen shot of Carmen comes home: Takamine Hideko as Carmen.

through acknowledging that both are engaged in mimetic excess. Rather thanresistance to Western culture, the film makes its statement through revision andsatire.

Janken girls

Mimetic excess, or endless doubling, also appears prominently in the 1955 filmJanken girls, starring former monomane singers Misora Hibari, Eri Chiemi andYukimura Izumi, who by this point were established stars in their own right.Collectively called the Three Girls (sannin musume), they later filmed three sequelstogether.14 Like many films of this era, Janken girls stages the tension betweenpopular music and classical music, although in this case, ‘classical’ means notWestern music but nagauta and kabuki. Hibari and Eri play high school studentsRuri and Yumi, while Yukimura plays a maiko (apprentice geisha) nicknamedPyua-chan who enlists their aid in finding a boy with whom she has fallen inlove.15 Ruri’s mother is a retired geisha, and scenes of the girls singing popularsongs are interspersed with scenes of Ruri and Pyua-chan practicing nagauta and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


Figure 6 Screen shot of the final scene in Janken girls: from left, Misora Hibari, Yukimura Izumiand Eri Chiemi.

traditional dances, some derived from kabuki scenes. In addition, because thefilm was co-produced by the Takarazuka Revue, there is a brief scene of a realTakarazuka performance.

In this melange of musical styles, popular music is not as overtly threateningas in Ginza kankan girls or Carmen comes home, in part because the characters(and target audience) are teens. The sexual dimension is almost absent from thefilm; even though the girls are looking for boyfriends, no one is coupled up inthe end. The emphasis is on friendship rather than dating.16 Popular music isaligned more with teenage high jinks than with sexuality, as when the girls use arepurposed version of ‘Uskudara’, one of Eri’s hit songs from 1953, to make funof their teacher. When the teacher goes to their parents to complain, she overhearsYumi singing the song again, then later hears the real song sung by Eri playingon the radio, further harassing her. These scenes are played for laughs, however;unlike in Carmen comes home, popular music does not symbolize kasutori culture.‘Uskudara’, a Turkish folk song which Eri sings partly in Turkish and partly inJapanese, is an example of the range of borrowing in early postwar popular music,as well as an example of her monomane skills. The reference to the song in the film

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 21

Figure 7 Screen shot of Janken girls: Eri performs ‘Skokiaan’ in a pith helmet surrounded bydancers in blackface.

is overtly self-reflexive, but the additional layer of playing the song on the radioincreases the mimetic excess, as the film reminds us of Eri’s career as a singer.

An even more extreme example of mimetic excess occurs in the middle of thefilm, when the girls go to a Takarazuka show. As they sit in the audience, Yumisays that when she watches a show she feels as if the stars become her. The girlsthen take turns imagining themselves on stage, as Yukimura, Eri and Hibari eachperform in their extra-diegetic personas as singing stars, intercut with shots oftheir fictional characters seated in the audience, enjoying their own performances.This slippage between the fictional characters and the real stars appears again atthe end of the film. After a quick narrative resolution emphasizing their bonds offriendship above romance or even family connections, the film ends with a longmontage of the three girls singing while riding a rollercoaster (Figure 6). As theseperformances encourage viewers to buy the singers’ records, these scenes can beread as examples of product placement in a film full of advertising for its sponsors(Meiji Chocolate, Heibon entertainment magazine and the Takarazuka Revue).As with Ginza kankan girl, performances by the stars as themselves in playful

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


Figure 8 Screen shot of Janken girls: Misora Hibari performs ‘La Vie en rose’ as herself.

moments of mimetic excess are part of the humor and fun of these films, whichrevel in inauthenticity.

Janken girls features some conflict between popular music and traditionalJapanese music, and struggles over what is real art, but, as in Carmen comeshome, these issues are dropped without much resolution. Not surprisingly in afilm aimed at teens, popular music is shown to be fun and cool, not a threatto morality. The portrayal of traditional music is more ambiguous. Ruri’s geishamother is training her to follow in her footsteps, but neither Ruri nor Pyua-chanenjoys the dances they are forced to perform. Pyua-chan manages to escape thegeisha life through the financial help of the boy she has a crush on; while they donot marry, he buys out her contract. Ruri performs a kabuki scene at the end ofthe film to appease her mother and absentee father, but any further discussion ofher future is foreclosed by a quick cut to the final scene of the three girls singingon a rollercoaster. Moreover, the status of geisha performance as high culture isnot at all clear in the film; Ruri’s teacher scolds her mother for exposing Ruri to animmoral lifestyle. Ruri’s mother replies indignantly that their singing and dancingis art, and geisha are the custodians of Japanese tradition. Yet the connection of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 23

geisha performance to the sex trade, like the echo of propaganda songs in Carmencomes home, is a reminder that traditional music cannot be simply equated withmoral rectitude.

The songs in Janken girls are wildly international, or, rather, stage kitschyinterpretations of other cultures. In the Takarazuka scene, each girl performs anelaborate song and dance routine of the latest international hits. Yukimura sings‘Sweet and gentle’, alternating verses in Japanese and English. The song, whichhas a cha cha beat, was a hit for US singer Georgia Gibb in 1955. Eri sings‘Skokiaan’, which is based on a tune written by August Musarurwa, a musicianin Zimbabwe (then called Southern Rhodesia) (Figure 7). In 1954 the tune wasa global hit with covers by singers in many countries, but Eri sings the English-language version recorded by a US ensemble called the Four Lads. Hibari sings‘La Vie en rose’, Edith Piaf’s signature hit from 1947 (although Hibari sings itin English), followed by ‘Esukimo no musume’ (Eskimo girl), while she dancesto a mambo beat (Figure 8). In the rollercoaster scene, each girl gets a solo ina medley of songs written for the film, all using Latin rhythms. Yukimura sings‘Yume no mambo’ (Dream mambo, music by Matsui Hachiro, lyrics by IdaSeiichi), Eri sings ‘Aoi sora no shita ni wa suteki na koi ga’ (Under the blue sky, awonderful love), and Hibari sings ‘Suteki na randebu’ (Lovely rendezvous, musicand lyrics by Hara Rokuro). They then all sing the title song ‘Janken girls’ (alsoby Ida and Matsui). This selection of songs reflects the state of popular musicworldwide in the early 1950s, when folk songs or other ‘exotic’ internationalsounds could become hits in the years before rock and roll. But more specifically,it also shows the hybridity inherent in early postwar kayokyoku. The film plays upthis kitschy exoticism by surrounding Eri with extras in blackface as she sings therefrain ‘happy happy Africa’ and by having Hibari sing about an Eskimo girl whiledancing the mambo in front of a sleigh. All three films, Janken girls, Carmen comeshome and Ginza kankan girl, stage the mimetic excess of the songs themselves:the Japanese ‘copy’ of foreign musical forms exceeds the original, unconcernedwith authenticity or context, and, rather than resisting the hegemony of Americanculture, instead revises appealing elements to suit local interests.

Conclusion

Considering twentieth-century popular music trends in Japan and the UnitedStates, it is unusual for a genre of music to change as its fans age, and for middle-aged fans to embrace a style of music different from what they enjoyed as teens.One parallel might be American country music, which also began as an extremelyeclectic, loosely defined collection of various songs before changing to a rigidgenre with narrowly defined sounds and performance practices, and expressinga nationalist sentiment. In the case of both country and enka, this change tookplace in reaction to rising economic growth and cultural shifts that threatened todisenfranchise a working-class, rural population. While the lyrics suggest a longing

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


for ‘the good old days’, the sound of the music implies that a return to ‘tradition’ isnot possible, or even really desirable. In the case of country, the genre is becomingmore diverse again, perhaps because it is less tied to a specific generation of fans.In the case of Japan, the shift from kayokyoku to enka mirrors other postwar effortsto re-imagine ‘traditional’ Japan, and more specifically for the war generation toexpress the pain and suffering which had been suppressed in the early postwaryears. Enka today is described as a conservative genre, resistant to change, butthe shift from early kayokyoku to enka and the insertion of ‘Japanese’ soundsin modern music is remarkably creative. Tansman writes that toward the end ofher career Misora Hibari embodies ‘the kitsch genius of a performer who makesstaged emotion seem real, and, indeed, feels it to be real’ (1996, p. 125). Thesame might be said of enka as a whole, which is based on an invented traditionbut nonetheless enjoyed as authentic by its fans.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of parts of this article were presented at the Association for AsianStudies annual conferences in 2008 and 2011, and at the Inter-Asia Popular MusicStudy Group conference in 2012. I am grateful to the conference attendees fortheir comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. Both kayokyoku and ryukoka mean popular song, and both terms were used interchangeablyfrom the 1920s through the 1950s, although now in retrospect the terms have narrowed some-what. For more on these terms, see Wajima (2010, p. 21). There was also a genre of politicalsong called enka in the Meiji period, although musically these two genres are not directlyrelated. For etymology of the term enka, see Wajima (2010, pp. 47–48).

2. I follow the Japanese practice of referring to Misora Hibari by her personal name.3. For more on Hibari’s early career, see Shamoon (2009, pp. 134–142) and Bourdaghs (2012,

pp. 54–63).4. The terms she uses are reculturization (cultural elements changed), deculturization (cultural

elements removed), acculturization (new cultural elements added), generic maintenance (nocultural elements added or removed, instead emphasis on universal appeal) (Yoneoka 2008,p. 29).

5. For more detailed definition of ‘yellow music’, see Jones (2001). For more on Japanese-bornRi Koran and her assumption of Chinese identity in Second World War propaganda films, seeYomota (2001).

6. Lyrics by Ei Rokusuke, music by Nakamura Hachidai. The song has been covered many timesall over the world. The English-language version ‘Sukiyaki’ was released by the US band ATaste of Honey in 1981.

7. For an overview of popular song before Meiji, see Groemer (2008).8. For a more detailed description of yonanuki major and yonanuki minor, see Hughes (2008,

pp. 43, 130–141).9. For description of the inaka-bushi or yo scale, see Hughes (2008, pp. 35–39).

10. Janken is the Japanese term for the game rock, scissors, paper.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

Deborah Shamoon 25

11. Hawaiian-born Haida Katsuhiko was actually better known as a kayokyoku singer than as anactor. One of his biggest hits was a cover of Kasagi’s ‘Yakyu kozo’ (Baseball kid, lyrics by SaekiTakao, music by Sasaki Shunichi) in 1951.

12. The poster is for the film The iron curtain (dir. William Wellman, 1948). Starring Dana Andrewsand Gene Tierney, it tells the true story of the defection of Soviet spy Igor Gouzenko to Canada.

13. Bourdaghs (2012, p. 45) reads her performances as playful, even subversive, of the emasculatingthreat she supposedly embodied, writing, ‘even as she performs the roles males have written forher as the liberated and liberating female body, she stands back from the role, winking at theaudience not to take it too seriously’.

14. The other Three Girls films are Romansu musume (Romance girls, 1956), Oatari sanshokumusume (Big hit three color girls, 1957) and Hibari, Chiemi, Izumi sannin yoreba (According toHibari, Chiemi and Izumi, 1964), all directed by Sugie Toshio.

15. Ruri and Yumi explain that the nickname Pyua-chan refers to the sounds made by chicks (pyuapyua) because they think she is cute, like a baby bird.

16. For more on the importance of female friendship in Janken girls, see Shamoon (2012,p. 91–92).

References

Atkins, E. T., 2001. Blue Nippon: authenticating jazz in Japan. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Birnbaum, P., 1999. Modern girls, shining stars, the skies of Tokyo: five Japanese women. New York:

Columbia University Press.Bourdaghs, M. K., 2012. Sayonara Amerika, sayonara Nippon: a geopolitical pre-history of j-pop. New

York: Columbia University Press.Dower, J., 1999. Embracing defeat: Japan in the wake of World War II. New York: Norton.Furmanovsky, M., 2008. American country music in Japan: lost piece in the popular music history

puzzle. Popular Music and Society, 31 (3), 357–372.Groemer, G., 2008. Popular music before the Meiji period. In: A. M. Tokita and D. W. Hughes,

eds. The Ashgate research companion to Japanese music. Burlington, VT, and Aldershot: Ashgate,261–280.

Hattori, R., 2003. Boku no ongaku jinsei. Tokyo: Ongaku no tomosha.Hosokawa, S., 1999. Strictly ballroom: the rumba in pre-World War II Japan. Perfect Beat, 4 (3),

3–23.Hughes, D. W., 2008. Traditional folk song in modern Japan. Folkestone: Global Oriental.Jones, A. F., 2001. Yellow music: media culture and colonial modernity in the Chinese jazz age. Durham,

NC: Duke University Press.Kitanaka M., 2003. Zoho Nihon no uta. Tokyo: Heibonsha.Mansfield, S., 2009. Tokyo: a cultural history. New York: Oxford University Press.Mitsui, T., 1997. Interactions of imported and indigenous musics in Japan: a historical overview

of the music industry. In: A. J. Ewbank and F. Papageogiou, eds. Whose master’s voice? Thedevelopment of popular music in thirteen cultures. Westport, CT: Greenwood Pres, 152–174.

Mori, Y., 2009. Reconsidering cultural hybridities: transnational exchanges of popular music inbetween Korea and Japan. In: C. Berry, N. Liscutin and J. D. Mackintosh, eds. Cultural studiesand cultural industries in Northeast Asia: what a difference a region makes. Hong Kong: Hong KongUniversity Press.

Nobarasha, 2002. Nihon no uta. Vol. 3, Showa 21–40. Tokyo: Nobarasha.Okada, M., 1991. Musical characteristics of enka. Popular Music, 10 (3), 283–303.Sakoguchi S., 2011. Bugi no joo – Kasagi Shizuko: kokoro zukuzuki wakuwaku aashindo. Tokyo:

Gendai Shokan.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3


Shamoon, D., 2009. Misora Hibari and the girl star in postwar Japanese cinema. Signs: Journal ofWomen in Culture and Society, 35 (1), 131–155.

Shamoon, D., 2012. Passionate friendship: the aesthetics of girls’ culture in Japan Honolulu: Universityof Hawai’i Press.

Stevens, C. S., 2008. Japanese popular music: culture, authenticity, and power. New York: Routledge.Tansman, A., 1996. Mournful tears and sake: the postwar myth of Misora Hibari In: J. Treat, ed.

Contemporary Japan and popular culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 103–136.Taussig, M. T., 1993. Mimesis and alterity. New York: Routledge.Tokita, A. M. and Hughes, D. W., 2008. Context and change in Japanese music. In: A. M. Tokita

and D. W. Hughes, eds. The Ashgate research companion to Japanese music. Burlington, VT, andAldershot: Ashgate, 1–33.

Wajima, Y., 2010. Tsukurareta ‘Nihon no kokoro’ shinwa: Enka o meguru sengo taishu ongakushi.Tokyo: Kobunsha.

Waseda, M., 2004. Looking both ways: GI songs and musical exoticism in post-World War II Japan.Yearbook for Traditional Music, 36, 144–164.

Yano, C. R., 2002. Tears of longing: nostalgia and the nation in Japanese popular song. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Yano, C. and Hosokawa, S., 2008. Popular music in modern Japan. In: A. M. Tokita and D. W.Hughes, eds. The Ashgate research companion to Japanese music, Burlington, VT, and Aldershot:Ashgate, 345–362.

Yomota I., 2001. Ri Koran to higashi Ajia. Tokyo: Daigaku Shuppankai.Yoneoka, J., 2008. Cultural reinterpretation of popular music: the case of Japanese/American cover

songs. Kyushu Communication Studies, 6, 23–41.

Deborah Shamoon is Assistant Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies at the NationalUniversity of Singapore. Her research interests include Japanese film, manga, animation and rep-resentations of gender. Her article on Misora Hibari was published in Signs: Journal of Women inCulture and Society in 2009. Her book on the history of shojo manga and girls’ magazines, Passionatefriendship: the aesthetics of girls’ culture in Japan, was published by the University of Hawai’i Press in2012. She may be contacted at [email protected]

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

NU

S N

atio

nal U

nive

rsity

of

Sing

apor

e] a

t 00:

05 0

6 A

ugus

t 201

3

recreating traditional music in postwar japan: a prehistory of enka

Documents