Bricolage

Research Log:  Nakayama Shinpei

July, 2006

Found レコード社 in Jinbocho, Kanda, among the used bookstores.  I also found an entertainment related bookstore there whose address and phone number I have kept.  There I was able to find a copy of Nakayama Uro’s songbook and nenpu for Nakayama Shinpei – though I already have a copy that I am reading, I may need to pick this up at some point.  I also found there several books by Soeda Tomomichi, including enka kara jazu he no nihonshi; enka no meiji-taisho shi; nonki bushi monogatari; ryukoka no meiji-taisho shi; and several others.  I was able to purchase two, and may be back for more, though I already have all of the other titles in the list above.  At the same time, the owner of the bookshop told me about fuzoku gaho (風俗画報) – a magazine about the entertainment world from the Meiji and Taisho periods.  I have been able to locate a couple of copies on microfilm, but getting sustained access to them while I search for relevant information may be problematic.  Most are located at university libraries far from my usual base of work in the Kanto plain and Chiba.  I’ll have to do some advance planning for a long trip – perhaps next summer.

I called the 中山晋平記念館 and talked to the director, who has told me that he has Nakayama’s diary in his public collection, but it is available only for viewing, not for research at this point.  The family still has control over the diary, and there are some things in it that they still consider to be somewhat private, so the kinenkan is respecting their wishes and prohibits copies.  Also, the reading room in the kinenkan is really just a viewing room, with apparently no desks or places to sit and read/take notes for long periods of time.  Since the diary is not allowed out of that room, and no copies are allowed, this seems at the moment to be somewhat of a roadblock – I’ll have to find a way around this.  The director did put me on the trail of a 中央公論 article that had been written by Nakayama Shinpei, though he didn’t know the details.  I called the magazine, and talked to a Mr. Takizawa, who was kind enough to search the computers and old back issues for a week for me, until he found a 1935 article by Nakayama and faxed it to me, free of charge.  I am in Mr. Takizawa’s debt, and plan to write a thank you note to the President of the company.  This was really above and beyond the call of duty for Mr. Takizawa.  If I ever publish this dissertation as a book, his name definitely goes in the acknowledgements section.

I have also been able to search the catalogs of the National Diet Library, and the GeNii search engine at http://ge.nii.ac.jp/genii/jsp/index.jsp, where I was able to find another set of books and some primary sources that I need to find a way to get my hands on.  This trip has been very much a preliminary trip, but very helpful in that respect.

I have also been doing my reading – the Nakayama Shinpei Nenpu by Nakayama Uro has put me on the track of several other people who will probably be important to the dissertation.  One is Shimamura Hogetsu, who was chief editor of the magazine Waseda Bungaku from 1905 into the 1920’s.  Shimamura was an avid translator and popularizer of Western literature, and was apparently accomplished in English and German literature (he studied in both countries).  He translated Tolstoy’s Resurrection and had the idea, apparently, of making it a musical.  It was Shimamura who asked Nakayama to write the music for a song he was calling Kachyusha no uta, for which Shimamura had also written the lyrics.  This was, of course, the first really popular song in Japan, selling 20,000 records in 1914, its first year.

The other individual I am beginning to think important to this dissertation is Noguchi Ujio, a song lyric writer, poet, and journalist who grew up near Tokyo, moved to Hokkaido to be a journalist, and then moved back to Tokyo in the 1910’s, where he became an influential popular music lyricist, and teamed up with Nakayama for many of their most important and popular songs, including the Boatman’s song.

I have read the 中央公論 article several times, and still need to do a deeper reading, but it is Nakayama talking about his life, his songs, and how they relate.  At this point, like the Nenpu, which is largely taken from Nakayama’s diary, I think this will be an invaluable primary source.  In many places it corroborates the Nenpu, so this helps me to establish at least some patterns, real events, and personal thoughts of Nakayama.

I have not had as much luck getting recordings of Nakayama’s music.  At レコード社 I found two Nakayama 78’s, and a number of Noguchi Ujio 78’s, but I have no machine capable of playing 78 rpm records, so didn’t buy them.  Kachyusha no uta is available in cover recordings, but the original is very hard to find, and I have not yet seen a copy.  I have one lead that I am currently tracing to a Columbia Records prewar and postwar popular song collection, but it is very expensive, and I have not yet confirmed if it is made from original recordings.  The score for Shimamura’s Resurrection is at least as difficult to find.  Fortunately, I have the music for piano for all of Nakamura’s songs, so I will not be without the melodies.

Nakayama Shinpei was one of the most influential composers in modern Japanese history. He was born in 1887 in what is now Nakano-shi, in the Northern part of Nagano prefecture. He was fourth of five boys, and had two sisters who died before he was born. His oldest brother died in 1893. Shinpei’s household was an old one, with important ties in what was then the village of Nomura, where they had set up household after moving from Gunma-ken in the Edo period. His father was the son of a village headman, but the Nakano family had limited ties to the entertainment world, as well – his grandfather’s older brother had given up his claim to the family headship, and moved to Edo (Tokyo) during the Edo period, where he became a tax collector in order to pay for his attempts to make connections and break into the entertainment world as a comedian.

Shinpei himself began studying music in his first year in elementary school, in 1894, where he began taking lessons on a miniature organ, learning to play the military marches of the era during the first year of the Sino-Japanese war. Shinpei has said that these songs had a profound influence upon his understanding of music.

(Nakayama, Urō. Nakayama Shimpei sakyoku kokuroku nenpu [中山晋平 作曲刻六年表]
(Nakayama Shimpei: A Chronology of a composer). 1980. pp. 287-8)

Talk by Dr. William Catton, Ph.D. at the Sustainable Energy Forum 2006, “Peak Oil and the Environment” May 6-7, 2006. Dr. Catton’s presentation slides on pdf are here.

A summary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.

EPA Global Warming Site

Global Warming: Early Warning Signs

Global Warming: The Competitive Enterprise Institute disputes the science

Tags: environment, global warming

Well, it has been some time since I posted on this blog, but I have some things to write about now, so thought I would dig back in. I have been on a trip to Japan for the last several weeks, and will continue here for a bit more time while I do some research for my dissertation, and my kids are in school, and my wife visits relatives. In all, it has been an interesting trip.

Today, I am interested in energy and the environment, and the growing cultural participation, here in Japan, in preserving both. I find it very interesting that public awareness of, and participation in, environmentally conscious and energy preservation related behavior seems, at least on the superficial level, to be more pervasive than it is in the United States.

Of course, hotels here are doing the same thing that hotels have been doing in the states for some time – that is, making it possible for guests to choose to use the same towels and sheets during all or part of their stay, rather than taking clean ones each day, thus, the claim is, saving water, soap, and the disposal of the mixture of those two after washing, as well as, of course, saving hotel costs. This has always seemed like a sensible thing to me, though I have done no research into the actual effectiveness at preserving energy and the environment. It is a small gesture, but real savings comes in small steps. So Japanese hotels are, and have been, doing this, and surprisingly, most guests participate by not having towels and bedding washed every day – even at hot springs resorts.

Another interesting observation I was able to make this time is the frequent use by hotels of rainwater for toilets. The claim of course, is that the use of rainwater means less use of well water for such things, and this saves water for drinking and agriculture, thus drawing down aquifers to a lesser degree. Again, I have done no research into the real-world effectiveness of this, and it seems to me, having grown up thinking of the water cycle as a closed system, that water used, whatever its source, is water used, and it still needs to be cleaned, etc. However, there is probably something to be said in an urban environment where run-off does not easily sink into the soil. Perhaps it preserves aquifers by siphoning off rainwater from the streets and rooftops. Since urban rainwater would seem to be less pure than purified well-drawn drinking water, it stands to reason that it is probably lower-cost, can be stored on rooftops, and may in fact benefit the environment by its efficiency alone.

My main point is, though, in Japan, the public seems to want to know that this is the case, and everyone I talk to is familiar with this measure. Its effectiveness as an environmental and energy-saving measure seems less important here than its usefulness in creating public awareness of the issue, and driving voluntary participation in other more useful measures.

Everywhere I go, people are interested in preserving water and energy. Of course, this has always been a part of Japanese daily life, at least since I first came here in 1989. Partly I think this is due to the fact that everything is relatively expensive here (though Hawaii now gives Japan a serious run for its money in that department). Another reason might be the relatively compact nature of most urban and suburban areas – with high population density, small homes, and close walls, what you throw out the window, into the garbage, or wash down your driveway very quickly becomes your neighbor’s business.

My mother-in-law was explaining this to me the other day when my wife and I were asking about the usefulness of the “amado” – the aluminum gate doors on all the windows in her house, which she, like everyone in the neighborhood, closes every night. She told us that it wasn’t really necessary any more to keep out storms, as it had been in older Japanese homes. It wasn’t really necessary to keep out burglars, she said, because if they want to get in, they’ll get in. She acknowledges that mostly they are a holdover from a different time, but now it is the privacy that, for her, makes them worthwhile. Certainly, we are within easy view of other neighbors from any window.

This living in a crowd kind of thinking seems to be related to saving energy and preserving the environment. When we were cleaning moss off the driveway a couple of weeks ago, I asked for soap. She said she didn’t want to do that because it would wash into the street and be a problem for her neighbors and the water supply. I definitely notice fewer people out washing their cars now than there were a dozen years ago. My wife says it is for the same reason. People don’t want to be seen washing soap and chemicals into the wastewater drain. Whatever the case, it seems that lack of privacy may be partly responsible for environmental awareness. Certainly, like Hawaii, there are strict laws about what you can and can’t wash down the storm drains with the hose, too. Can’t discount the law as a way to discourage unwanted behavior.

In Japan there have long been commentaries on the contemporary “tsukai-ste bunka”- the “disposable culture”. This has always manifested itself in the pervasive use of waribashi – break-apart chopsticks (which are pervasive in Hawaii, too). Well, the wari-bashi are disappearing, even from the tables of ramen shops, to be replaced with chopsticks that are provided, then washed as silverware, by the restaurant. This is a significant increase in cost, but because customers are demanding it, restaurants are responding. In corporate lunch rooms and school lunches, as well as take-out lunches at convenience stores (bento), people regularly now use their own chopsticks, which they carry with them in a special case to keep them clean, and the lunches no longer provide the waribashi taped to the side or lid. This tsukai-ste culture also was visible in disposable cameras and use of batteries in electronic devices.

The other day, I saw a commercial for batteries that really made me think. It said – “how long are you going to remain in the tsukai-ste culture? Join the modern world, and use rechargeable batteries.” Of course, it was a corporate commercial – for Toshiba batteries, I believe. The point is, the sale was being pitched based on a perception that Japanese customers now desire to avoid tsukai-ste products. Like most popular culture, the question is whether the commercial is being driven by consumer demand, or trying to drive it. Probably a little of both. This shows an interest in preventing waste, caring for the environment, and reducing energy use in both the consumer and corporate mindset. I see new examples of this every day.

It is simply a willingness to go to some new habit, whether it be active participation in curbside recycling, which Americans do, reduction of water use, which Americans do, reduction of electricity usage, which Americans do, or reduction in travel miles and gasoline usage, which Americans do, to some extent, that I see here. In Japan it is combined with a popular culture presence – a kind of expectation that everyone is doing it, and a sense that it is cool not to waste – that I don’t see in American popular culture. I find that to be an interesting difference.