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ENKA AS A MARKER OF SOCIAL DIFFERENCE:

UNDERSTANDING ‘TRADITION’ AS ‘TASTE’

TONG KOON FUNG

( B.A. ( Hons.) , NUS )

A THESIS SUBMITTED

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF JAPANESE STUDIES

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

2014


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DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis is my original work and has been written by

me in its entirety. I have duly acknowledged all the sources of information

which have been used in the thesis.

This thesis has also not been submitted for any degree in any university

previously.

Tong Koon Fung

13 January 2014


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Although many graduate students and advisors have described the

thesis writing process as a lonely one, a large number of individuals and

groups have in various ways throughout the course of this research provided

crucial information and assistance, without which this thesis would not have

been possible. I have incurred large debts of kindness, and this note of

acknowledgement only begins to scratch the surface of my gratitude towards

everybody who has helped me through the research and writing process.

I have been immensely fortunate to work under the supervision of Dr.

Timothy David Amos, who provided extremely valuable ideas and comments

on every part of the research and writing process, even though its theoretical

and disciplinary leanings were not in his area of academic specialisation. By

placing rigorous standards, from the crafting of the research topic to the

eventual writing of the thesis, and granting me much intellectual freedom and

autonomy, I have been able to research and write in the most highly

challenging yet stimulating environment. His prompt reviews of my drafts and

other academic assignments have also allowed me to carry out my work in the

most efficient manner possible.

Other faculty of the Japanese Studies Department of the National

University of Singapore also contributed greatly in the conduct of my research.

Participating in Dr. Lim Beng Choo‟s graduate research seminar pushed me

towards consistent research on theoretical and methodological frameworks to


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use in the research. Dr. Lim also provided much advice on the conduct of the

research, and important information about grants and scholarships that allowed

me to make considered financial decisions throughout my candidature and

field research. Dr. Morita Emi and Dr. Nakano Ryoko helped greatly in

crafting invitation letters and questionnaires used in the field research. Thanks

to their patient vetting of my initial document drafts, I was eventually able to

enlist the help of many research participants in the field. Other faculty

members, such as Dr. Hendrik Meyer-Ohle, Dr. Thang Leng Leng, Dr.

Deborah Shamoon and Dr. Christopher Michael McMorran, also provided

important critiques of my field research data and interpretations. Outside the

Department, I am grateful to Dr. Chua Beng Huat, who provided insightful

comments while I took part in his Cultural Studies in Asia course, and kindly

maintained an interest in my research even after my participation. Dr. Vineeta

Sinha‟s Reading Ethnographies course also introduced me to much of the

methodological framework that I eventually utilised for my field research and

thesis writing.

Also providing much crucial intellectual critique and emotional

support were the graduate students and alumni of the Department. I was

fortunate enough to go through the research and writing process together with

Huijun, who provided much intellectual discussion and emotional support

through our chats in and outside class. I also have to thank Eve, who

introduced me to some very important contacts in Japan, and Edwin, who

shared with me whatever he found on the Internet that could help with my

research. Finally, I am very grateful to Noel, who graciously offered to read


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through and critique drafts of this thesis within his busy schedule, and allowed

me to tap upon his brilliance to make it better.

Fieldwork is always a group undertaking, with many people coming

together to make knowledge possible. In the course of my field research, I was

fortunate to be helped along by many people both within and outside academia.

Firstly, much of the research would not have been possible without the

fantastic guidance of Professor Fujii Hidetada at Rikkyo University‟s Japanese

Literature Department. His expertise on Japanese nostalgia and the utilisation

of journal and magazine resources were essential in my documentary research.

Professor Fujii and his graduate class also graciously provided me with the

chance to present my research findings before I returned to Singapore. Also, I

am hugely grateful to Professor Mōri Yoshitaka, Matsuoka-san and the rest of

the Musical Creativity and the Environment seminar class, for also providing

me with the chance to take part in their classes and present my research

findings. Professor Mōri also provided opportunities to take part in the

conferences held by the Japanese Association for the Study of Popular Music

(JASPM), where I was able to receive critiques of my data and analysis, and

was introduced to a large number of Japanese cultural studies scholars,

including Professor Minamida Katsuya and Wajima Yūsuke, and their works.

Finally, I am indebted to Mio, who patiently worked with me in drafting up

research documents and interview questionnaires. That I could conduct my

observations and interviews without any real issues is a testament to her

expertise at conducting field research.


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Just as crucial were the many people who agreed to take part in the

field research: without them I would not have been able to learn anything

about how they enjoyed music. Firstly, I am truly grateful to the Friday

afternoon regulars at the karaoke kissa SC, who took me in warmly and

participated enthusiastically in the ethnographic research, even though I came

from a totally different cultural and generational background, and left so soon

after we had started to get to know each other deeply. The same can be said

for the participants at the Internet karaoke clubs K-club and NSK, who also

graciously gave me their time during our interviews and karaoke sessions. I

can only hope that I have done justice to their experiences through my

narrative in this thesis. I would also like to thank Shiraishi Takaaki from Guan

Barl Co. Ltd., Jero‟s management agency, and Fukuo-san from Victor

Entertainment Co. Ltd., for their kind assistance in allowing me to utilise some

of the singer‟s copyrighted images in this thesis, and even setting up an

opportunity to talk with Jero‟s management staff that I had to unfortunately

turn down due to scheduling conflicts.

The field research was carried out around the Tokyo area from March

to July 2013, and funded by the Graduate Student Exchange Programme Grant

from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. My candidature from January

2012 to December 2013 has also been supported by the National University of

Singapore Graduate Research Scholarship. I am truly grateful for the

University‟s and Faculty‟s financial support that has made this research

possible.


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Finally, I would also like to thank my family, Mio and God for being

so supportive and understanding, and providing much needed peace of mind

throughout the research and writing process to make it all happen. But, of

course, all shortcomings of this thesis are mine and mine only.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page i

Declaration ii

Acknowledgements iii

Table of Contents viii

Summary ix

List of Figures x

Note on Translations and Use of Names and Pictures xi

Introduction: Enka, „Japan‟ and Fandom 1

Chapter One: Enka, a National Musical Tradition? 24

Chapter Two: The Socio-Historical Development

of Musical Taste for Enka 41

Chapter Three: Appreciating Popular Music through Karaoke 61

Chapter Four: Performing Enka in Various Karaoke Settings:

The Ethnographer as Observer and Observed 78

Conclusion: Enka as a Marker of Social Difference 111

Bibliography 118


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SUMMARY

In being labelled „the sound of Japanese tradition‟ and „the heart and

soul of the Japanese‟, the popular music genre of enka has been discussed in

both popular and academic discourse as a representative of an essential and

authentic Japanese traditional identity. However, such an understanding is

insufficient in explaining its marginal position within the Japanese music

industry and audience. Instead, I argue that musical preference for enka serves

as a marker of social difference. Utilising sociological frameworks of musical

taste, community and „musicking‟ rather than culturally essentialist

understandings, I show how enka marked off a unique musical space

populated by a specific social demographic in its infancy in the later 1960s,

via a socio-historical investigation of the genre‟s development. I also show

how such demarcation continues today via an ethnographic study of three

karaoke settings in the Greater Tokyo area.

(141 words)


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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Cover photo for „Umiyuki‟ 30

Figure 2: Cover photos for „Yakusoku‟, „Serenade‟ and „Covers 6‟ 33

Figure 3: Floor plan of SC 65

Figure 4: Karaoke participants at SC 67

Figure 5: Floor plan of karaoke box for K-club gatherings 70

Figure 6: Floor plan of large karaoke box used for NSK gatherings 74

Figure 7: Some participants at NSK gatherings 75


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NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS AND USE NAMES AND FIGURES

All translations, photos and diagrams in this thesis belong to me,

unless where otherwise stated.

All European and American names in this thesis are presented in the

Western style (ie. first names before last names), while East Asian names are

presented in the East Asian style (ie. last names before first names). Also, the

names of field research participants and venues have been changed to

pseudonyms in order to protect their privacy.


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Introduction

Enka , ‘Japan’ and Fandom

The Japanese popular music genre known as enka has been roughly

described as a genre of „Japanese-sounding songs‟.1 Although such a broad

definition does more to express the ambiguity within the genre than signify a

concretised musical form, singers, composers, intellectuals and fans have

labelled it „the heart and soul of the Japanese‟ [„nihonjin no kokoro‟ ], „the

song of Japan‟ [„nihon no uta‟ ] and „the sound of Japanese tradition‟ [„dentō

no oto‟ ].2 Its sorrowful ballad melodies and lyrics evoking days and places

gone by has held fans in an imagination of „Japaneseness‟ rooted in a yearning

for an idealised past. 3 Enka has thus been coupled with ideas of Japanese

traditional identity and culture in Japanese musical discourse. Ideas of

traditional culture have also been equated with Japanese national, ethnic and

racial identity, in contemporary discussions of a homogenous and timeless

Japanese identity that have taken great hold in Japan and elsewhere,

particularly in the post-Second World War (hereafter referred to as the

„postwar‟) period.

1

Alan Tansman, „Misora Hibari: The Postwar Myth of Mournful Tears and Sake‟, AnneWalthall (ed.), The Human Tradition in Modern Japan, (Wilmington: SR Books, 2002), p.223.I use such a provisional definition in this section as a compromise between various texts that

provide a number of ways to define enka, but nevertheless agree that it at least signifies a

sense of „Japaneseness‟ through its sound, within the Japanese postwar musical context.2 Christine R. Yano, „Raising the ante of desire: Foreign female singers in a Japanese pop

music world‟, Allen Chun, Ned Rossiter and Brian Shoesmith (eds.), Refashioning pop musicin Asia: Cosmopolitan flows, political tempos and aesthetic industries, (London and New

York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p.161. See also Wajima Yūsuke, Tsukurareta „Nihon no Kokoro‟ Shinwa: „Enka‟ wo Meguru Sengo Taishū Ongakushi [The Created Myth of „TheHeart of Japan‟: A History of Postwar Popular Music Focusing on Enka], (Tokyo: KōbunshaShinsho, 2010), pp.8-9 and Aikawa Yumi, Enka no Susume [On Enka], (Tokyo: Bungei

Shunjū, 2002), p.185. 3

Christine R. Yano, Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song,(Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp.14-17,

Tansman, „Misora Hibari‟, p.227.


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Thus, enka has generally been discussed within a culturally essentialist

framework of musical understanding, which assumes that the genre‟s musical

form and practices (such as consumption, performance and consumption) is

grounded in and expresses an essence of „Japaneseness‟.4 Such a framework of

understanding posits enka as a source of cultural authenticity. Of course,

competent performances by non-Japanese enka performers complicate these

claims towards cultural tradition. But even without such glaring juxtapositions

of „cultures‟, essentialist portraits of enka that claim that it is a traditional

Japanese genre already present serious problems for cultural studies scholars

in understanding the genre‟s position within the Japanese cultural soundscape.

If enka possesses some inherent „Japanese‟ essence, why and how do some

sectors of the Japanese music audience express disdain for it, while

simultaneously claiming their own identities as „Japanese‟? How does it

reconcile with descriptions of the Japanese music market as being highly

segregated? Who exactly are these enka fans (and non-fans)? What are the

emotional connections that fans and non-fans make with the music? How, and

by whom, is „Japaneseness‟ determined?

In this thesis, I answer the first four of the above questions. I argue that

enka‟s appeals towards „Japaneseness‟ are ultimately built upon specific

musical and social discourses developed during Japan‟s period of high

economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s. This period saw a schism occur

4 Ralph Grillo uses the term „cultural essentialism‟ to mean „a system of belief grounded in a

conception of human beings as “cultural”…subjects, i.e. bearers of a culture, located within a boundaried world, which defines them and differentiates them from others. For example, Chua

Beng Huat deconstructs ideologically-driven assumptions of shared essential „Confucianvalues‟ to assert a common identity among East Asian states and their difference from other„cultures‟. Ralph D. Grillo, „Cultural essentialism and cultural anxiety‟, Anthropological

Theory, Vol.3 No.2, (2003), p.158.; Chua Beng Huat, „Conceptualising an East Asian popularculture‟, Chen Kuan-Hsing and Chua Beng Huat (eds.), Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader,(London: Routledge, 2007), pp.115-7.


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within both Japanese music producers and audiences, in which enka producers

and fans coalesced around an idealised nostalgic longing of a pre-modern

Japan. Enka thus effectively marked off a unique musical space populated by a

specific social demographic. In fact, as my field research of various karaoke

settings from March to July 2013 in the Greater Tokyo area shows, enka

consumption continues to demarcate an exclusive demographic. By

understanding enka fans and non-fans‟ behaviour surrounding karaoke

participation through the conceptual lenses of taste, community and

„musicking‟, I argue that the two groups, in their exclusive spaces of

communal „musicking‟, continue to build divergent musical tastes. Enka

should thus be understood as a musical marker of social differences based on

age, education, locale and family wealth.

As such, through this argument I suggest that the fifth question, „How,

and by whom, is „Japaneseness‟ determined?‟ is a complex and difficult

question to answer. The highly diverse nature of Japanese music listeners I

introduce in this thesis already greatly problematizes this question, but is only

the tip of the iceberg, as similar diversities of people and influences are also at

work within contemporary production of enka. The discussion of production

issues in enka is indeed another highly interesting field of research on

contemporary conceptualisations of Japanese musical tradition and identity,

but unfortunately it is an area into which I was unable to gain in-depth access,

and is hence out of this thesis‟s scope of discussion.


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Paths towards studying fandom

My original interest in enka was sparked by African-American-

Japanese singer Jero‟s debut in early 2008. Born on 4 September 1981 as

Jerome Charles White, Jr. in Pittsburgh, USA, Jero initially made headlines as

an unlikely enka success. Extensively promoted by media outlets as

simultaneously a perfect grandson to his Japanese grandmother Takiko and a

„foreign intruder‟ of enka looking to shake up the genre with his racial

background and flashy hip-hop attire, Jero‟s debut single „Umiyuki‟ [„Ocean

Snow‟] entered the Oricon charts (Japan‟s counterpart to the American

Billboard charts) in fourth place and eventually sold over 300,000 copies,

numbers unprecedented in enka.5 His debut year culminated in an invitation to

perform at the prestigious year-end music extravaganza, „ Kōhaku Uta Gassen‟

[„Red-White Song Battle‟].

Jero‟s early performances provided much food for thought about prior

assumptions of enka‟ s „Japaneseness‟. Many academic and popular analyses

of his performances have analysed how Jero‟s African-American heritage

negotiates the „Japanese‟ musical soundscape of enka. 6 But while

5 „ Jero: Shijō Hatsu no Kokujin Enka Kashu ga Kataru “Enka no Kokoro”: “Ichigo Ichie” de

Kōhaku Mezasu‟ [„Jero: The First Black Enka Singer Explains “The Spirit of Enka”: Aiming

for Kōhaku as “Once in a Lifetime”‟], Mainichi Shimbun, (14 March 2008),http://mainichi.jp/enta/geinou/graph/200803/14_5/?inb=yt., Accessed on 10 March 2011;Oricon, Inc., Enka no Kurofune, Tsui ni Debyū: „Yume wa Kōhaku‟ [The Black Ship of Enka Finally Debuts: „My Dream is to appear on Kōhaku‟], (2008),http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/music/52167/full/, Accessed on 22 November 2012. I explain in

more detail the connotations of cultural collision/invasion that the term „black ship‟ on page36.6 See Kosakai Masaki, Enka wa Kokkyō wo Koeta: Kokujin Kashu Jero no Kazoku Sandai no

Monogatari [ Enka Crossed National Borders: A Three-Generation Acount of Black Singer

Jero‟s Family], (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2011); Shelley D. Brunt, „When Black Tears Fall:Image-Making and Cultural Identity in a Case Study of the Hip-Hop/Enka Singer Jero‟,Catherine Strong and Michelle Phillipov (eds.), Stuck in the Middle: The Mainstream and its

Discontents: Selected Proceedings of the 2008 IASPM-ANZ Conference, (Auckland: UTAS,

2009), pp.58-67; Kiuchi Yuya, „An Alternative American Image in Japan: Jero as the Cross -Generational Bridge between Japan and the United States‟, Journal of Popular Culture, Vol.42 No.3, (2009), pp.515-29; and Christine R. Yano, Marketing Black Tears: Jero as African

http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/music/52167/full/http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/music/52167/full/


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deconstructing Jero‟s performances and enka according to culturally

essentialist imaginations of race and music highlights important questions

about the assumed „Japaneseness‟ of enka, it does not provide any insight into

the actual ways in which the Japanese music audience appraise Jero and enka.

There has been little effort to profile Jero‟s, or more crucially enka‟s, fanbase

utilising theories of musical consumption, in order to understand how music

audiences enjoy music.

Indeed, such research has rarely been attempted in studies about the

genre in general. Even Christine Yano‟s seminal text, „Tears of Longing:

Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song‟, focuses mainly on

analysing the content of enka songs and performances, with its sole chapter on

consumptive practices not displaying the same in-depth analysis. 7 Other

ethnomusicologists have concentrated solely on textual analyses to prove

enka‟s links to traditional, pre-modern Japanese musical forms.8 Meanwhile,

another strand of enka research has adopted a genealogical approach to

investigate the socio-historical and musical influences behind songwriters and

performers. 9 These approaches, however, are inadequate in understanding

enka‟s cultural positioning among both fans and non-fans within the Japanese

American National Singer in Japan, (Working Paper: 2010). I discuss these works in greater

detail in my analysis of Jero‟s enka career in Chapter One. I also thank Professor Yano forgraciously sharing her ongoing research with me.7 Yano, Tears of Longing, pp.124-47.

8 See Aikawa, Enka no Susume, Koizumi Fumio, Kayōkyoku no Kōzō [The Structure of

Kayōkyoku], (Tokyo, Japan: Heibonsha, 1996).9

See Mitsutomi Toshir ō, Media Nihonjinron: Enka kara Kurashikku Made [Media Nihonnjinron: From Enka to Classical Music], (Tokyo, Japan: Shinchōsha, 1987); Ben Okano, Enka Genryū Kō: Nikkan Taishū Kayō no Sōi to Sōni [Thoughts on Enka‟s Origins:Similarities and Differences between Japanese and Korean Popular Music], (Tokyo, Japan:

Gakugei Shorin, 1988); Deborah Shamoon, „Recreating traditional music in postwar Japan: a prehistory of enka‟, Japan Forum, (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09555803.2013.824019, Accessed on 4 September 2013; and Wajima, Tsukurareta.

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music audience, even as they contribute to our understanding of the forms and

history of its production.

I argue that the study of enka‟s relationship to Japanese national

identity and tradition must involve enka consumption, because of the

importance of everyday social practice in the construction of identities at all

levels, including the national. As Montserrat Guibernau argues via a wide-

ranging study of various nationalisms in Europe and North America, national

identity is a shared collective sentiment of similarity and belonging to the

same nation and difference from other nations. 10 Eric Hobsbawm has

discussed how such a shared sense of national identity has been created

(particularly in the era of European imperialism) by socio-political elites

through the manipulation of national memory to invent new traditions as a

focal point of shared national sentiment and identification.11 In this model of

national memory and identity, Hobsbawm clearly situates creative agency

firmly in the hands of these elites, whom Gibernau suggests have greater

access and control over mass media and political institutions. 12 But these

structures of meaning, memory and identity cannot be created or circulated

without social interactions, as Maurice Halbwachs argues through his concept

of collective memory.13 Recent scholars on nationalism such as Guibernau and

Jackie Hogan argue that these social interactions are not exclusively top-down.

Guibernau notes that „elites had to make concessions and incorporate certain

10 Montserrat Guibernau, The Identity of Nations, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p.9.

11 Eric J. Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions”, Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence O.

Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition, (Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University

Press, 1983), p.6.12

Guibernau, The Identity of Nations, p.18.13

Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, Lewis Coser (trans.), (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1992). Cited in Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture, Sara B. Young (trans.), (New

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p.16.


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elements of popular culture into what was to be designed as national culture,

in order for the masses to identify and recognise the elite‟s constructed

national culture as their own‟. 14 And in Hogan‟s study of contemporary

nationalism in Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom and United States, she

argues that for the masses, social negotiation and contestation of national

identity and memory occurs most frequently (and crucially) at the level of the

mundane and quotidian.15

Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington have described

fandom as one site for such everyday-level social negotiations and

contestations, „as part of the fabric of our everyday lives‟ that is inextricably

linked with the cultural practice and structures people are situated in. 16

Fandom, as Sandvoss and Daniel Cavicchi argue, can be defined at its very

base as „the regular, emotionally involved consumption‟ of cultural texts.17

Through such a mode of cultural consumption, which is always contextually

situated, „fandom is an aspect of how we make sense of the world, in relation

to mass media, and in relation to our historical, social, cultural location‟, and a

way through which fans negotiate and construct identities. 18 My choice of

studying enka fandom to understand the genre‟s links to national identity is

14

Guibernau, The Identity of Nations, p.18.15 Jackie Hogan, Gender, Race and National Identity: Nations of Flesh and Blood, (New York:

Routledge, 2009), p.2.16

Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington, „Introduction: Why Study Fans?‟,Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss and C. Lee Harrington (eds.), Fandom: Identities and

Communities in a Mediated World, (New York and London: New York University Press,

2007), p.9.17

Cornel Sandvoss, Fans: The Mirror of Consumption, (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005), p.8.

See also Daniel Cavicchi, „Loving Music: Listeners, Entertainments, and the Origins of MusicFandom in Nineteenth-Century America‟, Gray, Sandvoss and Harrington (eds.), Fandom,

pp.248-9.18

Joli Jensen, „Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterisation‟, Lisa A. Lewis(ed.), The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, (New York: Routledge, 1992),

p.27. See also John Fiske, „The Cultural Economy of Fandom‟, Lewis (ed.), The AdoringAudience, pp.46-48; and Lawrence Grossberg, „Is There a Fan in the House? The AffectiveSensibility of Fandom‟, Lewis (ed.), The Adoring Audience, pp.64-65.


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thus motivated by such links, both conceptually and in praxis, between

identity and fandom.

Enka fandom as a ‘taste community’

Particularly, I look towards sociological and ethnographic approaches

in understanding enka from audiences‟ perspectives. The concepts of taste,

community and „musicking‟ provide a productive framework for

understanding fans‟ and non-fans‟ attitudes towards and utilisation of enka, in

terms of their individual agency within social settings, by highlighting the role

that the genre plays in generating individual and collective identities. This

understanding is crucial in considering enka‟ s claims to an authentic Japanese

identity.

In „Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste‟, Pierre

Bourdieu uses the results of two large-scale questionnaire surveys conducted

in 1963 and 1967-8 to show how cultural tastes (including music) among the

French public were stratified according to social distinctions based largely

upon the kind of educational training received, which was in turn dependent

on possession of economic, social and cultural capital. 19 He argues that

differences in cultural tastes are self-perpetuated through class distinctions

made by the various class groups:

„Through the economic and social conditions which they

presuppose, the different ways of relating to realities and

fictions, …with more or less distance and detachment, are very

19 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Richard Nice

(trans.), (London, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), pp.13-18.


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closely linked to the different possible positions in social space

and, consequently, bound up with the systems of dispositions

(habitus) characteristic of the different classes and class

fractions. Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier. Social

subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish

themselves by the distinctions they make…in which their

position in the objective classifications is expressed or

betrayed.‟20

Later studies on taste have criticised Bourdieu‟s overly-deterministic

use of class to explain taste differences. For example, Michèle Lamont, by

investigating American and French upper-middle classes‟ cultural

consumption in the 1980s, argues that factors such as wider access to higher

education and increased lower middle-class and upper working-class incomes

have dismantled older class-based status distinctions. 21 Meanwhile, social

markers such as gender, ethnicity and age have become as important as class

in understanding cultural consumption differences. 22 However, these

criticisms have not taken away the importance of understanding the habitus in

which cultural consumers are situated to explain how they arrive at their

consumption choices.23 As such, in Chapters Two to Four I discuss the kinds

20 Ibid., pp.5-6. Brackets in original.

21 Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals, Manners: The Culture of the French and American

Upper-Middle Classes, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).22

Michèle Lamont and Marcel Fournier (eds.), Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries

and the Making of Inequality, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).23

I use „habitus‟ in the manner defined by Bourdieu: „systems of durable, transposabledispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as

principles which generate and organise practices and representations that can be objectively

adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an expressmastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them‟. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic ofPractice, Richard Nice (trans.), (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p.53.


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of social differences, such as age, education, family income and location,

which can be observed between enka fans and non-fans. Such audience

segregation is most observable in the various types of settings that have

developed in the karaoke industry, as socialisation processes at each setting

involving music have created and maintained divergent musical tastes.

On the other hand, within cultural studies there was growing discontent

with Stuart Hall‟s, John Fiske‟s and David Morley‟s early critical works on

media consumption. These argue for audiences‟ individual agency (via the

„active audience‟ concept) in interpreting and creating meaning out of media

texts, and the socio-discursive possibilities and constraints that shape the ways

in which these could be done.24 However, the heavily theoretically-centred

analyses led scholars in the 1980s, such as Phil Cohen, to lament them as

„simply the site of a multiplicity of conflicting discourses…[with] no reality

outside its representation‟.25 Such discontent led later scholars to look towards

ethnographic methods of conducting empirically- based research on audiences‟

relationship with media texts.

Particularly, Simon Frith asks, „how is it that people…can say, quite

confidently, that some popular music is better than others?‟26 Examining such

value judgements as expressions of individual choices and preferences (even if

24 Kagimoto Yū, „Ōdiensuron Saikō: Oto wo Fureru Keiken Kara [Rethinking Audience

Theory: From the Experience of Encountering Music]‟, Soshioroji [Sociology], Vol.48 No.3,(2004) , pp.5-6. See also Stuart Hall, „Encoding/Decoding‟, Simon During (ed.), The CulturalStudies Reader (Second Edition), (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp.507-17; John

Fiske, Reading the Popular,(London and New York: Routledge, 1991); David Morley,Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, (London: Routledge, 1992); Nicholas

Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst, Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and

Imagination, (London: Sage, 1998).25

Phil Cohen, Rethinking the Youth Question, (London: Post 16 Education Centre, Institute of

Education, 1986), p.20. Cited in Andy Bennett, „Researching youth culture and popularmusic‟, British Journal of Sociology, Vol.53 No.3, (2002), p.455. Brackets in Bennett (2002).26

Simon Frith, „Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music‟, Simon Frith (ed.), Popular Music:Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies: Volume IV: Music and Identity, (London

and New York: Routledge, 2004), p.42.


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they may be socially shaped), Frith views „taste‟ as a marker of difference.

Explaining preferences and tastes, he notes:

„”Personal” preferences are themselves socially constructed.

Individual tastes are, in fact, examples of collective taste and

reflect consumers‟ gender, class and ethnic backgrounds...But I

do believe that this derivation of pop meaning from collective

experience is not sufficient…we still need to explain why some

music is better able than others to have such collective effects,

why these effects are different, anyway, for different genres,

different audiences, and different circumstances.‟27

Through taste, Frith is pointing at the „highly nuanced, localised and

subjective ways in which music and cultural practice align in everyday

contexts‟.28 For Frith, the value of popular music is derived from „how well

(or badly), for specific listeners, songs and performances fulfil (social)

functions‟. 29 These functions, performed via the „experience of music as

something which can be possessed‟, are namely: the creation of both

individual and collective identity, managing the relationship between private

and public emotions, and shaping popular memory by acting as a marker in the

organisation of time through remembrance.30

Thus, Frith locates musical meaning away from the musical text itself,

and within music‟s social functions and the settings in which it is consumed.

27 Frith, „Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music‟, p.46.

28 Andy Bennett, „Towards a cultural sociology of popular music‟, Journal of Sociology,

Vol.44 No.4, (2008), p.429.29 Frith, „Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music‟, p.42. Brackets mine.

30 Ibid., pp.38-41.


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Musicologist Christopher Small, in describing „the act of musicking‟, further

discusses the sociality of music:

„The act of musicking establishes in the place where it is

happening a set of relationships, and it is in those relationships

that the meaning of the act lies. They are to be found not only

between those organised sounds which are conventionally

thought of as being the stuff of musical meaning but also

between the people who are taking part, in whatever capacity,

in the performance; and they model, or stand as metaphor for,

ideal relationships as the participants in the performance

imagine them to be: relationships between person and person,

between individual and society, between humanity and the

natural world and even perhaps the supernatural world.‟31

In other words, „musicking‟ defines music and its meaning as being

derived socially, as it describes how musical meanings are made through

audiences‟ interaction with musical texts, and with each other through musical

texts. Such a view of music‟s sociality thus also questions how it is utilised in

allowing people to make associations with each other, putting the concept of

community into relevance. Community, as noted by Jernej Prodnik, is a

notoriously difficult concept to define. 32 However, I draw attention to his

objection of a clear dichotomy between „real‟ communities based on

31 Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening, (Middletown,

Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1998), p.13.32

Jernej Prodnik, „Post-Fordist Communities and Cyberspace : A Critical Approach‟ , HarrisBreslow and Aris Mousoutzanis (eds.), Cybercultures: Mediations of Community, Culture,

Politics, (Amsterdam, New York: Rodolpi: 2012), p.77.


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relationships structured in the material world, and „virtual‟ communities based

on interactions mediated by cyberspace.33

Prodnik cites Benedict Anderson‟s argument that since all

communities are imagined, they should not be distinguished in terms of

authenticity, but rather in the style in which they are imagined. 34 This means

that rather than dismissing associations built upon Internet communication as

not being „communal‟, such forms of interaction should be seen as one of

many other avenues through which community ties can be built and

sustained.35 Anderson‟s argument also supports the relevance of community as

a concept to study human associations of not just the place-based, group-

focused and emotionally intimate Gemeinschaft type, but also of the more

interest-based, self-centred and emotionally distant Gesellschaft type.36

Jose van Dijck, studying anime and heavy metal fans on YouTube who

share their cultural preferences with other anonymous users, combines the

concepts of taste and interest- based community into the term „taste community‟

to denote „groups with a communal preference in music, movies and books‟.37

He draws this definition from Antoine Hennion‟s discussion on the importance

33 Ibid., pp.77-78.

34 Ibid., pp.78-79. See also Benedict R.O‟G. Anderson, Imagined Communities, (London:

Verso, 1991), p.6.35 This discussion is important, given the importance of the Internet as a medium through

which the Internet karaoke clubs I investigated as part of my field research congregated (see

next section and Chapters Three and Four).36

For the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft analytical dichotomy, see Ferdinand Tönnies,

Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [„Community and Society‟], (Darmstadt: WissenschaftlicheBuchgesellschaft, 2005), (reprinted from Leipzig: Fues's Verlag, 2nd ed. 1912; 8th edition,Leipzig: Buske, 1935). For discussions on communities of place, see Jerry W. Robinson, Jr.

and Gary Paul Green, „Developing Communities‟, Jerry W. Robinson and Gary Paul Green(eds.), Introduction to Community Development: Theory, Practice and Service-Learning, (Los

Angeles, CA, London, Delhi, Singapore: SAGE Publications, 2010), p.2. For discussions on

communities of interest, see France Henri and Béatrice Pudelko, „Understanding andanalyzing activity and learning in virtual communities‟, Journal of Computer Assisted

Learning, Vol.19, (2003), p.478.37 Jose van Dijck, „Users like you? Theorizing agency in user -generated content‟, Media

Culture Society, Vol.31 No.1, (2009), p.46.


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of taste-building in community life and communal participation to build

taste.38 This discussion brings us back to Frith, Bourdieu, Lamont and Small,

who suggest the sociality of cultural products such as music through their

various arguments. Thus, the study of musical taste should be grounded in

investigations into communal settings of consumption, in which musical and

communal meanings are negotiated by participants. It is within such a

framework of the „taste community‟, focusing on communal taste-building,

that I approach the study of enka consumption by fans and non-fans in Chapter

Four.

Such approaches have already been suggested by scholars working on

popular music in Japan. For example, Minamida Katsuya, Tsuji Izumi and

Tōya Mamoru champion approaches that pay attention not only to theoretical

interpretations of song texts.39 Of particular importance is Kagimoto Yū‟s

suggestion that a focus on the actual experience of audiences‟ interaction with

music is important in analysing how music gains meaning.40

Crucially, scholars researching on enka, such as Christine Yano,

Wajima Yūsuke, Mitsui Toru, Mitsutomi Toshir ō and others, recognise that

the genre is essentially a form of popular music: songs are circulated and

consumed through mass media such as the CD, cassette tape, television, radio

and karaoke. This recognition provides justification for a sociological and

ethnographic investigation of enka consumption driven by the latest

38 Antoine Hennion, „Those Things That Hold Us Together: Taste and Sociology‟, Martha

Poon (trans.), Cultural Sociology, Vol.1 No.1, (2007), p.103, 111-2.39

Minamida Katsuya and Tsuji Izumi (eds.), Bunka Shakaigaku no Shiza: Nomerikomu Media

to Soko ni Aru Nichijō no Bunka [Viewpoints on the Sociology of Culture: The All-Encompassing Media and The Everyday Culture Within It], (Tokyo, Japan: Minerva Shobo,

2008); Tōya Mamoru (ed.), Kakusan Suru Ongaku Bunka wa Dou Toraeru ka? [How Do WeStudy the Expanding Music Culture?], (Tokyo, Japan: Keisō Shobo, 2008). pp. i-ii.40

Kagimoto, „Ōdiensuron Saikō‟, pp.3-18.


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theoretical concerns in popular music research. This thesis thus focuses on

investigating activities of „musicking‟ and communal taste building through

karaoke. Particularly, I ask the following questions: Who are these enka fans?

How did they come to develop their taste for enka? How do they identify with

each other through enka? On what terms do they make connections with and

generate meaning for enka? How are ideas of tradition and „Japaneseness‟

expressed, negotiated, rejected and/or reaffirmed in their consumption

behaviour? Are these mechanisms specific only to enka and its fans? These

questions will allow us to better understand the cultural position that enka

occupies in contemporary Japanese music, and how enka fans and non-fans

create and sustain musical tastes through communal consumption.

Karaoke ethnography: Transgressions of the ethnographer

To investigate actual practices of „musicking‟ and communal taste

building for both enka fans and non-fans, I conducted participant-observation

studies of behaviour surrounding musical preferences in various karaoke

settings from March to July 2013, although my initial interactions with one of

the communities stretched back to 2010. Karaoke provided a logical fieldsite,

because firstly karaoke participation performs a major role in enka

consumption, with many songs being released with karaoke versions,

mark eted as „easy to sing‟ [„utaiyasui‟ ] and urging listeners to „try singing the

songs at karaoke‟ [„chōsen shite mitekudasai‟ ]. Furthermore, as a

predominantly social activity (although there is a recent phenomenon of

„hitori-karaoke‟ [„karaoke alone‟]), it allows music fans to partake in musical

consumption and amateur performance within a communal setting. In fact,


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entire books on rules of karaoke conduct, listing out taboos such as

monopolising the microphone and selecting the „wrong‟ songs, among others,

highlight the communal nature of karaoke participation by discussing

socialisation processes, such as regulation of behaviour, that occur during

karaoke.41

Other methodological and epistemological concerns directed the

selection of specific karaoke settings as my research fieldsites. During the

course of the ethnographic research, I participated in and observed the

activities of three karaoke settings: SC, a karaoke kissa situated in Asaka City

on the north-western outskirts of Tokyo, and two Internet karaoke clubs, K-

club and NSK, which organised monthly gatherings in cramped rooms inside

karaoke box establishments near Kawasaki Station just south of Tokyo.42 The

choice of a karaoke kissa was influenced by popular accounts from the Enka

Renaissance Association and Tsuzuki Kyōichi, who point out the integral roles

of karaoke kissas as a venue where enka fans gather to enjoy and perform their

favourite music.43 In contrast to the kissa is the karaoke box, which attracts a

largely non-enka demographic.44 NSK and K-club provided box settings which

41 See Maruyama Keizaburo, Hito wa Naze Utaunoka [Why Do Humans Sing?], (Tokyo:

Asuka-shinsha, 1991); Miyake Mitsuei, Karaoke Kokoroe Chō: Karaoke Enka Bunkaron

[„Lessons from Karaoke: Karaoke and Enka Culturalism], (Tokyo: Hakushoin, 2004); Ueno Naoki, Karaoke wo Motto-motto Umaku Miseru Hon [Book for Singing Karaoke MuchBetter], (Tokyo: KK Longsellers, 1993).42

A kissa can roughly be translated as „café‟, although kissas are typically olderestablishments located away from trendy neighbourhoods serving an older clientele. Kissas

may also provide other kinds of services besides food and drinks, such as communal karaoke

or manga. Boxes are establishments that contain many smaller rooms in which customers can participate in karaoke in more private and intimate spaces. See Chapter Three for an in-depth

comparison between these two kinds of establishments.43

Enka Runesansu no Kai [ Enka Renaissance Association] (ed.), Enka wa Fumetsu da [ Enka

Will Not Perish], (Tokyo: Sony Magazines Shinsho, 2008), pp.126-9, Tsuzuki Kyōichi, Enka yo Konya mo Arigatou: Shirarezaru Indīzu Enka no Sekai [Thank You For Tonight Again, Enka: The Unknown World of Indies Enka], (Tokyo, Japan: Heibonsha, 2011).44

Mitsui Toru, „The Genesis of Karaoke‟, Mitsui Toru and Hosokawa Shuhei (e ds.), KaraokeAround the World: Global Technology, Local Singing, (London and New York: Routledge,

1998), p.39. The All Japan Association of Karaoke Entrepeneurs survey conducted in 1995


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particularly played up the role of „musicking‟ in communal participation,

rather than non-music-related forms of socialisation, because membership was

predicated upon the appreciation of songs from the Showa period for the

former and karaoke in general for the latter. Thus, these settings would

provide fertile ground for analysis of „musicking‟ behaviour. Chapter Three

provides a more in-depth explanation of the three settings, particularly key

members in the research, and the segregation of karaoke consumers and

musical tastes between kissas and boxes.

In these settings, I participated and observed other participants‟

behaviour in communal karaoke. I noted their song preferences to identify

which songs were most popular in each setting, particularly focusing on the

year in which songs were released and the singers most represented. I also

paid attention to the conversations and behaviour that we would engage in

between songs. I then conducted individual interviews, where I asked about

karaoke participants‟ musical preferences. The questions included the

following: What are your favourite songs and singers? How did you come to

like them? What kind of frame of mind, or emotions, do you have when you

listen to these songs and singers? What do you think is their appeal? What

kind of personal meaning do the songs and singers take on for you? Finally, I

also asked if they liked enka, and what they thought about enka‟s claim to

represent an essentialist „Japanese identity‟ through tradition. Although the

sample size of participants (around forty) was small, limiting the

showed that young consumers (university and high school students, and young adults)

consisted over 70% of karaoke boxes‟ clientele, while working-age and elderly men consisted86% of karaoke snacks‟ customers. Zenkoku Karaoke Jigyosha Kyokai [All Japan Association

of Karaoke Entrepreneurs], Karaoke Hakusho [White Paper on Karaoke], (Tokyo: ZenkokuKaraoke Jigyosha Kyokai, 1996). Cited in Oku Shinobu, „Karaoke and Middle-aged and OlderWomen‟, Mitsui and Hosokawa (eds.), Karaoke Around the World, pp.54-55.


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representativeness of the research in providing an overall picture of the

Japanese music audience, nevertheless my comparative approach presented an

important shift away from existing enka research, which has thus far focused

on production practices (and in rare cases, consumption) solely within the

genre.

Contemporary researchers are confronted with methodological,

epistemological and ontological issues about the ethnographic research and

writing process. Critical ethnographers such as James Clifford, George Marcus

and Michael Fischer have questioned the intellectual and relationship contexts

in which ethnographic research is conducted and written up.45 Jennifer Mason

convincingly argues that ethnographers need to acknowledge that their

knowledge is generated only via their participation in and embodiment of the

behaviours and processes being studied.46 Within my research, I found that my

very presence within the karaoke settings generated certain reactions and

modes of thinking unavailable to other researchers. 47 I characterise my

experiences within these settings as a series of culturally and generationally-

framed transgressions, as my biographical, cultural and academic background

always contrasted in some way with those of other karaoke participants. These

transgressions proved methodologically important in highlighting musical and

cultural identities and meanings held by both enka and non-enka fans.

45 See James Clifford and George E. Marcus, Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of

Ethnography, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986); George E. Marcus andMichael Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique, (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago

Press, 1986).46

Jennifer Mason, Qualitative Researching (Second Edition), (London: Sage Publications,

2002), pp.87-90.47

I hesitate to use the terms „native‟ or „insider‟ in comparing myself with other researchers, particularly Japanese, because of the multiple loci through which ethnographers are identified

according to the research setting. See Kirin Narayan, „How Native is a “Native”Anthropologist?‟, American Anthropologist, Vol.95, (1993), pp.671-86 for a conciseargument about the problems of ethnographer identity in the fieldsite.


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Transgression, as Chris Jenks defines, „is to go beyond the bounds or

limits set by a commandment or law or convention, it is to violate or

infringe‟. 48 However, transgr essions are „manifestly situation-specific and

vary considerable across social space and through time‟, despite appeals to

their universality. 49 Instead, drawing upon ideas of social constructionism,

Jenks proposes the importance of the „context of the act‟s reception‟ in

understanding instances of transgression.50

For this research, I draw attention

to disconnects in my age, nationality, upbringing and education from the

karaoke participants with whom I interacted. I am a young academic

researcher born in 1986, and have been brought up in Singapore for the vast

majority of my life. I did not try to hide my cultural and academic background,

although I also did not reveal them when first meeting other karaoke

participants. Once revealed, however, my cultural and academic background

began to also factor into how other participants viewed my karaoke

performances and social interactions within the settings.

In fact, when karaoke participants‟ analysed and talked about my

karaoke performances and involvement in their social relationships against

these biographical, cultural and academic characteristics, truly insightful

observations about their views on enka and musical tradition were borne. This

was possible because of the effects of transgressive behaviour that Jenks

describes:

„But to transgress is also more than this (a violation), it is to

announce and even laudate the commandment, the law or the

48

Chris Jenks, Transgression, (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), p.2.49 Ibid., pp.2-3.

50 Ibid., p.8.


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convention. Transgression is a deeply reflexive act of denial

and affirmation. Analytically, then, transgression serves as an

extremely sensitive vector in assessing the scope, direction and

compass of any social theory…‟51

Here, Jenks suggests the possible uses of transgression as a

methodological tool in understanding social behaviour and settings. As such, I

decided against conforming to the norms of being a young foreign academic

researcher. Instead, I found that a more fruitful approach towards

understanding karaoke participants‟ musical understandings was to enact, in

various ways, performances that they did not expect from young foreign

researchers, using my limited but still substantial knowledge of local

behaviour and various Japanese popular music genres including enka.

Although such performances might have affirmed, as Jenks suggests,

„commonly-held‟ conceptions of musical tradition, they also allowed me to

create stronger rapport with karaoke participants, through the creation of a

sense of surprise, in order to facilitate in-depth critical discussions about these

„commonly-held‟ conceptions later on. These „transgressive‟ performances

also created a sort of spectacle, not unlike Jero‟s enka performances, which

provided opportunities for reflections on prior assumptions of musical

meaning.

51 Ibid., p.2. Brackets mine.


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Towards a new framework for understanding enka

The following chapters present my exploration of enka from the

audience- and taste-based theoretical framework described thus far. In Chapter

One, I introduce enka‟ s stylistic forms, showing how these have been

described as links to a pre-modern musical tradition and an „authentic

Japanese identity‟. I then analyse Jero‟s enka career, as an example of how a

particular kind of performer has destabilised culturally essentialist

understandings of the genre. Audience reactions towards his enka

performances also highlight the need for alternative theoretical frameworks,

based on taste, to explain audiences‟ connection to enka.

In Chapter Two, I provide a socio-historical look at the development of

musical taste for enka, and argue that such musical taste is held only by a

specific segment of the Japanese music audience. I first show how

contemporary enka is a relatively recent construct borne out of struggles

among Japanese music producers and intellectuals of the 1960s, and became

attached to notions of „Japanese tradition‟.52 I then describe the development

of nostalgic longings among older segments of the Japanese population for a

furusato [„hometown‟] positing the r ural locale of the past as an ideal vision of

„Japan‟ during the 1960s and 1970s, and their gravitation towards enka‟ s

themes of rural longing. Effectively, a division in musical tastes within the

Japanese music audience developed around this time.

In Chapters Three and Four, I highlight karaoke as a social music

consumption setting to understand how communal „musicking‟ activities have

highlighted and entrenched such segmentation of musical tastes not only in

52

This is an important topic in understanding enka‟ s development as a music genre worthy ofin-depth research on its own, but ultimately outside of the audience-centred focus of this

thesis.


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terms of age, but also education, locale and family income. I first describe

karaoke‟s historical development in Chapter Three, as an example of how the

divide in musical tastes and audiences has persisted through a communal

„musicking‟ activity. I also introduce the three karaoke settings, SC, K -club

and NSK, and key participants in the research, to show the social and musical

segregation between them. Chapter Four then analyses the „musicking‟

activities occurring within each setting. I argue that the communal taste-

building and „musicking‟ behaviour of karaoke participants, particularly with

regards to enka, continue to highlight and entrench social differences based on

age, locale, family income and education. I first explore the different ways in

which I transgressed in my participation in each setting, to tease out the

generational and culturally essentialist terms in which both fans and non-fans

explained their views towards enka. I also show how non-fans used culturally

essentialist frameworks to also discuss other Japanese popular music genres.

Finally, I make a contrast between how enka fans and non-fans create musical

and communal identities and relationships through „musicking‟ and taste-

building activities surrounding genre, in a manner that produces further

segregation. These participant observations are supplemented with anecdotal

data from interviews, and I read their behaviour and anecdotes against their

social life-histories and socio-musical experiences.

I conclude by pointing out the inability of existing enka research to

provide an accurate picture of the peripheral position the genre and its fans

occupy within the Japanese popular music industry, and highlight how my

sociologically- and ethnographically-based methodologies show that Japanese

music listeners have developed differing opinions and attitudes towards the


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genre. By pointing out the specific socio-historical origins of both the genre

and its fandom, and also the diverse ways in which karaoke participants in

different settings approached the use of enka in their gatherings, I argue that

enka performs the more socially divisive role of marking off a certain fan

demographic, within a heavily segmented Japanese music audience that

conceptualises „Japan‟ in various ways.


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Chapter One

Enka, a National Musical Tradition?

In this chapter, I destabilise culturally essentialist assumptions that

enka unquestionably represents an essential Japanese traditional identity. I first

introduce how both Japanese and Euro-American academic discourses have

coupled the genre to notions of Japanese tradition, in terms of its formal styles

and content. However, I show that culturally essentialist narratives are unable

to fully explain the fluidity and dynamism of musical performance and

consumption. This is done by highlighting how audiences have viewed the

racially- and culturally-defined spectacle of Jero‟s enka performances in non-

cultural terms of musical appreciation. Audience reception towards Jero‟s

performances suggests that an alternative framework for understanding enka

consumption and audiences, based on taste, is needed.

Enka’ s ‘traditional’ features

In describing the musical content and form generally found in enka

songs and performances, Christine Yano explains kata as „a recognisable code

of the performance action‟. 53 She defines kata as „stylised formulas‟ and

„patterned forms‟, and suggests that the concept reflects the deeply embedded

structural approach to production, performance and consumption in the

genre.54 In other words, enka relates compositional and performance motifs to

certain ideals and values deemed „traditional‟, through kata‟s highly structured

and explicit semiotic code. This approach to the analysis of enka songs is also

53 Yano, Tears of Longing, p.25.

54 Ibid., pp.24-25.


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prominently utilised by publications such as Okada Maki‟s „Musical

Characteristics of Enk a‟ and Koizumi Fumio‟s „Kayōkyoku no Kōzō‟

[„Structure of Kayōkyoku‟], which operate on the assumption that the

authenticity of such songs as a representation of tradition rests on its

faithfulness to kata. 55

Yano discusses an exhaustive list of ideas and images „cued‟ by

specific kata. They work to aestheticise and glorify nostalgia for a „Japan‟

situated in an idealised rural past. In textual/lyrical kata, this „Japan‟ is most

succinctly referenced in the word „furusato‟.56 In enka, furusato does not

necessarily mean a physical location (although Mizumori Kaori (1973- ),

dubbed „the queen of locale songs‟, has had a lucrative career singing many

songs that reference actual places and sceneries), but rather a setting in which

an idealised „traditional Japan‟ can be visualised through a process of

nostalgia and longing.57 Lyrical kata serve as signifiers of the people (such as

mothers, stoic men and jilted lovers) inhabiting the pristine, rural furusato

setting full of natural goodness, and the intimate and emotionally intense

interpersonal relationships that bind „traditional Japanese‟ together. Even the

lyrical structure, which is highly influenced by the pre-modern Japanese poetic

form of waka, provides a sense of tradition.58

Ideas of tradition are also expressed through performative kata. Firstly,

vocal techniques, drawn from pre-modern Japanese forms such as jōruri,

55 See Koizumi, Kayōkyoku no Kōzō, pp.148-81; Okada Maki, „Musical Characteristics of

Enka‟, Gerald Groemer (trans.), Popular Music, Vol.10 No.3, pp.283-303.56

Yano, Tears of Longing, pp.148-79.57

Jennifer Robertson, „The Culture and Politics of Nostalgia: Furusato Japan‟, InternationalJournal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol.1 No.4, (1988), pp. 494-518; Marilyn Ivy,

Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan, (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1995), p.104. I discuss the furusato concept in greater detail, when detailing the socialupheaval of 1960s and 1970s Japan in Chapter Two.58

Yano, Tears of Longing, p.92, 103.


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minyō and naniwa-bushi, signify gendered expressions of melancholy,

stoicism, grief or pain.59 The most prominent technique is the kobushi, a vocal

ornamentation described by Okada as a „melismatic kind of singing‟. 60

Yoshikawa Seiichi argues for the sensuality that is experienced in utilising

kobushi, and proclaims it as the „life-blood of enka‟.61 Several fans that I

spoke to during fieldwork echoed such views about kobushi. Also, embodied

kata provide visual indicators of emotion and gender ideals. Yano provides a

list comparing the fashion styles (encompassing both traditional Japanese and

Western dress), poses and stage movement of female and male enka singers

during performances, to show how the genre clearly differentiates between

„otoko-michi‟ and „onna- gokoro‟ [„the path of a man‟ and „the feelings of a

woman‟].62

Compositional kata, meanwhile, play an important role in generating

feelings of nostalgia by aurally signifying ideas of the past through

instrumentation. This is most prominently done through the use of yonanuki

scales, particularly the minor.63 These scales share many characteristics with

traditional music, but were actually developed in the Meiji period as music

practitioners and educators sought to fit Japanese musical modes into their

newly acquired knowledge of Western musical theory.64 Also, the imitation of

sounds produced by traditional instruments, such as the shakuhachi and

shamisen, in song arrangements work to create a faux traditional feel to the

music.

59 Ibid., pp.109-14; Koizumi, Kayōkyoku no Kōzō, pp.172-80.

60 Okada, „Musical Characteristics of Enka‟ , p.288.

61 Yoshikawa Seiichi, Kanashimi wa Nihonjin: Enka Minzokuron [Grief is Japanese: Enka

Ethnology], (Tokyo, Ongaku no Tomo Sha: 1992), pp.35-37.62

Yano, Tears of Longing, pp.114-22.63 Okada, „Musical Characteristics of Enka‟, pp.284-6.

64 Ibid., pp.285-6.


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Even production and consumption practices are portrayed as markers

of „tradition‟ and „marginality‟, as Yano describes. 65 Firstly, she notes the

strict apprenticeship system and senior-junior [ senpai-kōhai] hierarchy

practiced in enka, with budding singers undergoing extensive and gruelling

training periods as live-in disciples. Also, many songs are still released on

cassette tapes, matching enka‟s older fan demographic and their reliance on

older technology. Performers also exhibit their hard effort by travelling

extensively across Japan to perform at small-scale venues that allow for close

personal interaction with fans (a practice that has precedents in pre-modern

itinerant performers).66

In terms of consumption as a marker of marginalised tradition, Yano

notes that enka sales occupy a miniscule portion of the Japanese music market

(less than one percent in 1998).67 Also, enka sales patterns provide a stark

difference to the instant consumption and disposal dominating the Japanese

musical scene today: typically rising through the charts slowly and gradually,

songs usually take months or even years to achieve hit status. Together, these

production and consumption traits are valorised as expressions of

perseverance, hard work and a „Japanese spirit‟, as seen in a music industry

journal article which describes enka as being „like a marathon‟, just as Japan is

„a “marathon country”‟ that emphasises „spirit and effort‟.68

65 Yano, Tears of Longing, pp.45-76.

66 Ibid., p.74.

67 Oricon, Inc., Orikon Nenkan 1998 Nenban [1998 Oricon Yearbook], (Tokyo: Orijinaru

Konfidensu, 1998). 68 Anonymous, „Ōen shitakunaru kashu no jōken to wa?‟ [What Makes a Singer Incite Your

Support?], Konfidensu, Vol.26, (1992), pp.21-37.


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Enka is thus a nostalgia built on what Yano calls a „memory of pain‟

aestheticised into something desirable. 69 By coupling marginalised rural

experiences with images of the past, enka‟s nostalgia presents a kind of

„internal exotic‟ that preserves temporal, spatial and cognitive distance from

modern urban Japanese lifestyles, while preserving a longing to „return‟ to

such an essentialised „traditional Japan‟. 70 Enka‟s aesthetic appeal is thus

explained as a structured representation of an essential „traditional Japanese

musical identity‟, compared to rock, pop and other genres seen as more

modern and Western-derived. Indeed, Yano cites an explanation often utilised

by enka fans in explaining its lack of popularity in younger audiences: „those

Japanese who do not like enka are either insufficiently experienced,

particularly in life‟s hardships and sorrow, or not true to their innate

Japaneseness‟.71

But paradoxically, Yano also concedes that a culture-based approach

towards enka understanding, through the primacy of structured forms dictated

by kata, cannot totally explain how certain enka singers are better received

than others. Instead, she suggests that kosei [individual character], which she

uses to explain individuality and originality in performances, is what „makes a

star a star‟.72 Successful singers „break out little by little‟, showcase their

„mastery over kata‟, and „convey the impression that no one can sing quite like

them: their kata is not only distinctive, it is elusive‟.73 Yano‟s explanation

69 Yano, Tears of Longing, pp.14-5; David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p.8.70

Yano, Tears of Longing, pp.15-6. Cf. Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing.71

Christine R. Yano, „The Marketing of Tears: Consuming emotions in Japanese popularsong‟, Timothy J. Craig (ed.), Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture, (New

York: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), p.61.72 Yano, Tears of Longing, p.123.

73 Ibid. Emphasis in original.


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implies that despite the primacy of kata as structure in understanding enka

thus far, the genre cannot be seen as a totally static genre determined by form.

In fact, while her explanation of kosei has been conducted in terms of the

production and performance of enka thus far, I suggest, through the previous

discussion in the Introduction (pages 8 to 15) on sociological approaches to

studying music consumption, that there is no reason why audiences should be

excluded from any kind of agency in their consumption of the music. For the

rest of this chapter, I will analyse Jero‟s career developments, and how

audiences have viewed them, to show the need for a non-culture-based

understanding of the genre.

Jero’s enka career

Jero‟s early media appearances provide vivid examples of the racially-

and culturally-bounded discourse in which his performances are situated. For

example, in an appearance on Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai [Japan Broadcasting

Corporation, abbreviated as NHK] programming in 2008 to perform Misora

Hibari‟s (1937-1989) 1950 hit „Echigojishi no Uta‟ [„Echigo Lion-Dancer

Song‟], Jero‟s first sentence in his explanation to the host‟s quizzing of his

connections to the song „My grandmother was Japanese, so…‟ provides the

greatest hint about the framework through which he negotiates enka‟s musical

meanings.74 To hammer home the point, a photo of Takiko embracing a young

Jero is superimposed on the screen not only during the chat, but also the actual

song rendition. A year later, in a television appearance to promote his third

single „Tsumeato‟ [„Nail Marks‟], he again cites his grandmother as his main

74 shenyuetao, „Jero – Echigojishi no Uta‟ [„Jero: The Echigo Lion-Dancer Song‟], Youku,

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzI2NTY5MzY=.html, Accessed 22 November 2012.

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzI2NTY5MzY=.htmlhttp://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzI2NTY5MzY=.html


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influence in performing enka, while a family portrait including Takiko is set as

a prominent backdrop as he performs.75 These attempts at legitimising his

performance of enka also act to discursively assert the „Japaneseness‟ of the

genre, as it is seemingly only through Takiko that he obtains the cultural

licence to perform.

Figure 1: Cover photo for „Umiyuki‟ (Courtesy of Victor Entertainment Co.Ltd.)

Jero and his producers also crafted his initial visual image, which

provides the most visible reason for the interest surrounding his enka career,

within a culturally essentialist understanding of music genres. Indeed, Jero‟s

appearance in hip-hop fashion, with his baseball cap, baggy shirts and trousers,

large chains, sneakers, and occasional dance moves, panders to existing

Japanese musical stereotypes about African-American inspired hip-hop culture

(See Figure 1).76

75 gbc025026, „Jero: Tōku & Tsumeato‟ [„Jero: Talk & Nail Marks‟]

Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtXJfimG1fk, Accessed 22 November 2012.76

See John Russell, „Race and Reflexivity: The Black Other in Contemporary Japanese Mass

Culture‟, Cultural Anthropology, Vol.6 No.1, (1991), pp.3-25; Ian Condry, Hip-Hop Japan:Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalisation, (Durham and London: Duke University Press,

2006), p.25.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtXJfimG1fkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtXJfimG1fk


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Describing his thoughts on performing enka in hip-hop fashion in a

2008 interview, Jero expressed some reservations about such a fashion choice,

but conceded that it would be even stranger for him to wear a kimono on

stage.77 He also mentioned that this choice of fashion was the best way to

allow him to „perform comfortably as himself‟.78 His producer, Kawaguchi

Norihiro, suggested in Jero‟s 2011 biography that such ideas of „himself‟ and

„normal‟ were most probably based on a recognition of dominant cultural

discourses in Japanese society about African-Americans and Japanese.79

As such, Jero‟s early attempts to introduce his own kosei into the genre,

through his „fresh‟ and „unique‟ visual appeal, were overwhelmingly based on

a culturally-defined framework of enka as „Japanese music‟. Through the

usage of visual markers of African-American hip-hop culture, including his

own dark skin, Jero transgressed into a soundscape deemed exclusively

Japanese, and created a culturally-defined spectacle through his performances.

These performances also had the effect of reaffirming the racial and cultural

categories and boundaries of fashion and music, by skilfully adhering to both

established performance kata and conventional notions of African-American

hip-hop fashion and culture, and calling into question for audiences the

(in)compatibility of both cultural styles.

Jero has released several more singles, and six cover and two original

albums, since „Umiyuki‟. He and his producers have looked to expand on his

early artist image, while retaining some unique elements separating him from

other enka singers. Firstly, the development of a trademark „Jero sound‟ can

77 „Shoshin Wasurezu, Kokkyō wa Wasurete Enka no Kokoro wo Utaitsuzuketai‟ [„Wanting to

Continue Singing Enka‟s Spirit, Without Forgetting Roots but Forgetting National

Boundaries‟], Fujin K ōron, Vol.93 No.11, (22 May 2008), p.153.78 Kosakai, Enka wa Kokkyō wo Koeta, p.64.

79 Ibid.


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be observed in his releases since 2009, starting from „Yancha Michi‟ [„The

Way of the Brat‟]. Jero‟s later single releases have exhibited increasingly

modern sounds and arrangement styles. For example, „Serenade‟, released in

February 2013, has little trace of enka‟s trademark motifs. Instead, the song

features a highly stripped down arrangement style focusing on the sorrowful

lead piano melody backed by a mellow bass-line and dramatic guitar solos.

This musical direction is a significant departure from „Umiyuki‟ , which

showcased considerable allusions towards instantly recognisable traditional

Japanese musical motifs, such as the shakuhachi flourish at the beginning of

the song and rapid ascents and descents along the pentatonic scale.

Even his cover releases offer such departures from the stereotypical

enka sound. His version of the 1970s hit „Hisame‟ [„Sleet‟], for example,

prominently features an electric guitar riff backed by a strings section. Also,

songs usually associated with more urban and modern genres, such as the

1970s „new music‟ hit „Katte ni Shiyagare‟ [„However You Want It‟] and the

popular 1980s rock ballad „Wine Red no Kokoro‟ [„Wine-red Heart‟], are

included in his cover albums. While Jero still employs certain performative

kata, especially melismatic vocal ornamentations like kobushi and yuri (a slow

and broad vibrato), numerous collaborations with performers and composers

from other popular music genres, including Hitoto Yō, Nakamura Ataru,

Tamaki Kōji and Marty Friedman, have allowed him to develop a distinctly

more urban and modern sound.


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Figure 2: Cover photos for „Yakusoku‟ (top left), „Serenade‟ (top right) and„Covers 6 (bottom) (Courtesy of Victor Entertainment Co. Ltd.)

Jero‟s visual imagery has also undergone significant, although gradual

change, as he started to appear more frequently in suits from the release of

„Yakusoku‟ [„Promise‟] in 2009. The preference towards a full suit is evident

today. In the „Covers 6‟ album released in July 2013, Jero stands in a side

profile with a wistful and faraway look, decked in a black blazer jacket and

pants matched with white shirt and grey necktie. He has his left hand in his

pocket, while his right hand grabs his jacket. In „Serenade‟ released in

February 2013, he is dressed in a black woollen winter jacket, while adorning

a colourful silk scarf (See Figure 2).

While these moves can be read as a shift towards more orthodox enka

fashion, Jero still adorns a number of trademark accessories. Firstly, he is still


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never seen without headgear, with a do-rag topped off by a cap, or more

frequently in recent years a fedora hat. Jero also wears ear studs and a big

chain around his neck, reminiscent of the „bling‟ worn by African-American

hip-hop artists, in his appearances. He finishes off his suit with hip-hop

sneakers, rather than formal shoes. As such, while Jero‟s changes in fashion

style towards enka orthodoxy presents a seeming contradiction to his musical

departure from stereotypical enka, he still maintains his unique visual appeal

as a singer with African-American heritage, and as a „cool‟, „chic‟ and

„modern‟ enka performer.

Jero has also played up his African-American heritage in live concerts

and appearances, by performing Euro-American music, particularly soul. At

his special live event held in Yokohama in late June 2013, for example, Jero

started off with a rendition of the 1970 soul classic, The Spinners‟ „It‟s a

Shame‟, followed by Bobby Caldwell‟s „What You Won‟t Do for Love‟. He

also performed Michael Jackson‟s „Human Nature‟ later in the 75 -minute

show. These songs appeared in the set-list with numbers from enka and 1980s

and 1990s pop-rock ballads, creating a prominent juxtaposition between

„Japanese‟ and „African-American‟. Jero also self-deprecatingly referred to his

bilingualism when talking about the set-list by commenting, „Well now that

I‟m done with a couple of songs in English which I‟m poor at, let‟s move on

to some songs in Japanese which I‟m also poor at.‟ Thus, Jero has not

completely discarded the kind of culturally essentialist juxtaposition that

earlier media appearances and promotional material highlighted. His linguistic,

ethnic and cultural backgrounds are still valuable tools through which he (and


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his producers) expresses his kosei, and differentiates himself from other enka

singers.

Jero‟s stated aim in pursuing this image and sound is to encourage

more listeners, particularly younger ones, to develop a liking for enka.80 In his

biography, he recounts his disappointment as a teenager in how young

Japanese turned away from what he considered an expression of the wonderful

ideals of Japan by dismissing it as old-fashioned. Jero thus seeks to

experiment with various sounds and fashion styles in his enka performances as

a professional singer, in order to entice new (and younger) fans to the genre.81

Jero‟s experimentations may also be read as a way to overcome

problems of declining popularity, as his releases after „Umiyuki‟ experienced

increasingly slow sales, failing to capitalise on its success. 82 But these

experiments in Jero‟s sound and fashion apparently have not worked to rebuild

his initial stardom, nor entice more fans to his music. His releases from 2010

onwards generally peak in the lower regions of Oricon‟s top 200 charts.83 Jero

has also missed out on NHK‟s K ōhaku since 2010, a widely-held marker of

general popularity, with some media reports dismissing him as a „one -hit

wonder‟.84

80 See for example „Kashu Jero- san: Nengan no Enka Kashu toshite Karei ni Bureiku Chū‟

[„Singer Jero: Having a Big Break as the Enka Singer He Always Wanted to Be‟], NikkeiŪman, (August 2008), p.96; and „ Monthly Pick Up!: Jero‟, Gekkan Za Terebijon , (August2008), p.40.81

Kosakai, Enka wa Kokkyō wo Koeta, pp.32-33, pp.170-1.82

Oricon, Inc., Jero no Shinguru Rankingu [Jero‟s Singles Ranking], (2013),http://www.oricon.co.jp/prof/artist/445413/ranking/cd_single/; Oricon, Inc., Jero no Arubamu

Ranking [Jero‟s Album Ranking], (2013),http://www.oricon.co.jp/prof/artist/445413/ranking/cd_album/, Accessed on 10 November

2013.83

Ibid.84

„Enka Waku Dai Sakugen de Kōhaku ni Risutora no Fubuki!: Gakeppuchi ni Tatsu

Kobayashi Sachiko, Mikawa Kenichi, Hosokawa Takashi , Godai Natsuko‟ [„A Flurry ofRetrenchment as Enka Slots are Lessened: Kobayashi Sachiko, Mikawa Kenichi, Hosokawa

Takashi, Godai Natsuko on the Brink‟], Shūkan Shinshō, (18 November 2010), p.35.

http://www.oricon.co.jp/prof/artist/445413/ranking/cd_single/http://www.oricon.co.jp/prof/artist/445413/ranking/cd_album/http://www.oricon.co.jp/prof/artist/445413/ranking/cd_album/http://www.oricon.co.jp/prof/artist/445413/ranking/cd_single/


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Evaluating Jero’s enka performances

Most media appraisals of Jero‟s enka career have been conducted in

culturally-bound frames of comparison. Reports early on heavily portrayed

him as not only „the first black enka singer‟ [„hatsu no kokujin enka kashu‟ ],

but also „the black ship of enka‟ [„enka no kurofune‟ ].85 The use of the term

„black ship‟ is an allusion to his African-American heritage and skin colour,

and also the arrival of the gunships of Commodore Matthew Perry to Tokyo

Bay in 1853 which forcibly opened up the Tokugawa Shogunate to foreign

trade and cultural influences. Jero‟s presence in enka is thus portrayed largely

in the same vein as Perry, in opening up the genre to foreign elements.

Cross-cultural comparisons still abound in later reports. An article in

the women‟s weekly magazine „ Josei Jishin‟, dated 18 October 2011,

introduces his musical knowledge by quoting him (in bold) as follows: „I

started listening to enka at a young age due to my Japanese grandmother‟s

influence, but I also got used to the sound of the jazz and R&B music from

older times. I like the rhythm. It‟s another point of musical

enka tradition

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