Music of Japan - The International Shakuhachi Society

Music of Japan

Miyata Kōhachirō
Japan Victor Corp. - JV-1140

Track	Title	Kanji	Length	Artist
1	Kōjō no Tsuki	荒城の月	02'54	Shakuhachi: Miyata Kōhachirō
	An arrangement for a shakuhachi and orchestra of a melody composed by Rentaro Taki (1879-1903). He is well known to Japanese people as an earliest composer of Western music in Japan. He composed many nice songs for primary and middle school pupils, and they are quite popular among Japanese still now. "Kojo no Tsuki" is one of them. Kojo is a ruined castle and tsuki is the moon. The poem for the original song describes the moonlight over the ruined castle and expresses the longing for the days when the castle was prospering.
2	Aka Tombo	赤とんぼ	02'01	Shakuhachi: Miyata Kōhachirō
	This is an arrangement for a shakuhachi and orchestra from a song for children, The melody of the song is played by shakuhachi. In the former half of this century the juvenile literature became very popular among the writers and the poets in Japan. Among the poems for children of those days there are a number of such expressing adults' feeling reminiscent of their childhood. "Akatombo" is one of them. There are several species of dragon-flies in Japan and the red dragonfly is one of the most familiar species, which children are very fond of. The music was written by Kosaku Yamada (1886-1965), who led the musical circle of Japan as a composer and conductor in the former half of this century.
3	Hana	花	02'38	Koto: Yonekawa Toshiko Shamisen: Toyohisa Shizuko
	This is also a work of Rentaro Taki. The original piece is a two-part chorus and is written by the techniques of purely Western music. The present recording is an arrangement for koto, shamisen and orchestra. The two solo instruments play the soprano melody alternately. The word hana means flowers in general. But, it frequently stands for cherry- blossoms because, as known to all over the world, the cherry-blossoms is the most representative flower of Japan. The poem describes the beautiful scenery of the cherry- blossoms along the river- side of the Sumida in Tokyo. Hanami, or cherry blossoms viewing, is one of the merriest events of the year in Japanese life. As it has been sung as a musical lesson at middle schools for more than 60 years, its melody and word is well-known to almost every Japanese.
4	Habu no Minato	波浮の港	02'31	Koto: Yonekawa Toshiko Shamisen: Toyohisa Shizuko
	This is also an arrangement for koto, shamisen and orchestra by the melody of a popular song. Habu is a small fishing harbor in Izu-Ooshima, a small island near Izu peninsula. The original song was composed in 1923 by Shimpei Nakayama (1887-1952) who wrote many melodies with Japanese feeling, and had a great vogue all over the country in 1930's. As the original words are composed of three stanzas of the same melody, the arranged piece here recorded repeats the melody three times: the first and the third time played by shamisen and the second by koto.
5	Mizuiro no Waltz		03'01	Voice: Strings Emanon
	This is one of the representative works of modern popular music of Japan. The performance recorded is played by a string orchestra, while the original form had a song. It came into vogue immediately after the World War II. It would be easy to imagine how the sweet, slightly plaintive but elegant melody of this song softened the temper of the Japanese people after the War and fascinated them. It is still popular now and is very frequently performed especially at ball· rooms.
6	Suzukake no Michi		03'19	Voice: Strings Emanon
	Here we present you a continental style tango music by the melody of a popular song. The original song was written and composed in 1942, and was prevalent among young people, especially college students and graduates, because the song dealt with college life.
7	Gunkan March		02'31	Koto: Yonekawa Toshiko Shamisen: Toyohisa Shizuko
	This is really the number one masterpiece of Japanese march. The original piece was composed by Tokichi Setoguchi (1868-1941) in 1897, the same year when Sousa wrote the famous march "The Stars and Stripes forever." Indeed Setoguchi is comparable to Sousa. He, as well as Sousa, was the band-master of the naval band and composed several good marches. "War- ship March" is the most excellent work of his and really bears comparison with marches by Sousa. After the disarmament of Japan at the end of the World War II there was a time when everything concerning militarism was ostracized. "Warship March" was quite rarely heard then. However, its musical excellence has not been forgotten. Today it seems that this march regained a great popularity as a pure march apart from militarism. Needless to say, the original piece is for a military band. The present piece recorded here is arranged for koto, shamisen and orchestra, with the purpose of showing the tones of the traditional instruments.
8	Nozaki Kouta	野崎小唄	02'58	Shamisen: Toyohisa Shizuko
	Here presented is a popular song melody played by taishogoto and shamisen. The song came into vogue in 1930's. I t is based on a very popular Bunraku puppet drama titled "Shimpan Utazaimon" (1780) in which dramatized is a love romance between a merchant's daughter and a shop- boy. So, the melody is not quite modern. It has something traditional, of folk- songs, or something that suggests the atmosphere of Edo Period (1600c.-1868), the period before the Meiji Restoration). Such a melody represents one of the types of the hit songs in Japan still today. In this recording, accompanied by a small orchestra of Western instruments, the taisho- goto and the shamisen repeat the melody three times: the first and the third time by the taisho-goto and the second by the shamisen.
9	Genroku Hanami Odori	元禄花見踊	03'16	Koto: Yonekawa Toshiko Shamisen: Toyohisa Shizuko
	The most brilliant section of a famous nagauta piece is arranged here into a piece for a koto, three shamisen and a small orchestras of Western instruments. Nagauta is a genre of the traditional music of Japan for voice with shamisen which developed during Edo Period chiefly as an accompaniment for Kabuki dance. The original piece is a very lively one describing the merriment of cherry-blossoms viewing at Ueno hill (present Ueno Park in Tokyo, a famous cherry- blossoms viewing place) in the Genroku Era (1688~1704). Genroku is the segment of Edo Period, during which Japanese culture reached a zenith of gorgeousness and the epicurean tendencies of people came to extremity.
10	Kiyari Kuzushi	木遣りくずし	01'52	Koto: Yonekawa Toshiko Shamisen: Toyohisa Shizuko
	This is an old popular song composed at the end of Edo period. It was derived from a type of folk song named kiyari. It is a kind of labor song sung at construction works, for instance, when a number of laborers work together to move weighty things. As the work is quite heavy, the original song is very, very slow. But, when it was taken up as a popular song, it was modified into a moderate tempo so as to fit shamisen accompaniment. It is still now one of the popular pieces of hauta, a genre of traditional popular song.
11	Kyoganoko Musume Dojoji	京鹿子娘道成寺	03'34	Koto: Yonekawa Toshiko Shamisen: Toyohisa Shizuko
	Here again is a brilliant passage of a nagauta piece, The original is the accompanying music of the most famous Kabuki dance- drama. It is based on an old legend to the following effect: a maiden fell deeply in a forlorn love with a young itinerant priest who lodged a night at her house, and ran after him; he took refuge in a temple, Dojoji, and the temple priests hid him in the temple bell; but the maiden crazy in love transformed herself into a gigantic serpent and destroyed the bell and the young priest with a blaze of resentment. Though the legend sounds terrible, the Kabuki dance-drama, aiming at showing beautiful dances of a blooming maiden, is really brilliant and gay, and is one of those dances which young girls who take lessons of Japanese classical dance long to dance on the stage. In this recording it is arranged for koto, shamisen and orchestra with some Japanese percussions.
12	O Edo Nihon Bashi	お江戸日本橋	02'46	Koto: Yonekawa Toshiko Shamisen: Toyohisa Shizuko
	This is an arrangement for koto, shamisen and a small orchestra of Western instruments from a popular song under the same title. The original song of this piece was a popular song named Hakone- bushi which prevailed about at the middle of the 18th century. It was so popular that many different words was put to its melody. "O-Edo Nihonbashi" is the most popular today among them, but not a few different poems are still sung today to the same or slightly changed melody. "Edo" is the old name for Tokyo. Nihonbashi is a famous bridge in the centre of Edo and is the starting-point all the roads radiating for countries. The picture, painted by Hiroshige, a famous ukiyoe painter, shows the concourse at the Nihonbashi in the morning. It was a custom in Edo Period (1600c-1870c) that travellers leaving Edo started from this bridge just after the sun- rise.
13	Mari to Tonosama		02'46	Voice: Strings Emanon
	This is a song for children played by string orchestra. It was composed by Shimpei Nakayama (See above) and is not of folk origin. However, the composer who was trained with techniques of Western music but was deeply versed in Japanese folk music made it up so as to sound very much like a folk-song for children.
14	Tooryanse	通りゃんせ	03'44	Shakuhachi: Yamaguchi Gorō Koto: Yonekawa Toshiko
	This is the melody of a real folk-song for children. It is an arrangement for shakuhachi, koto, jushichigen and string orchestra.
15	Shōjōji no Tanuki Bayashi	証城寺の狸囃子	02'45	Voice: Strings Emanon
	An orchestration from a children’s song. Tanuki is a kind of a badger inhabiting east Asia and Japan. There are in Japan many folk-stories about tanuki: it is believed that it can take various forms, such as a man, a woman and any other thing, and that it often bewitch men. A tale "Mujina" in the famous "Kwaidan" or a ghost story by Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is based upon one of these folk-stories about tanuki (Mujina is another name for tanuki.) Hearn's tale is a ghastly one. but, generally speaking, most folk-stories about tanuki have some comical elements. The present children’s song deals with one of such comical tales. Tanuki is also believed to play drum music by drumming its belly. Especially, a story told at a temple named Shojoji says that at moonlight nights a number of tanuki appear in the temple garden and, forming a tanuki-percussion-band, so to speak, play their drum music competing with the temple priest who chants a service percussing a mokugyo or a wood- block. The original song even is very rhythmic, and the rhythmic and percussive side is still more emphasized in the orchestration recorded here. The same song was once taken up by Eartha Kitt and was arranged into a jazz piece.