Sounding the Journey: The Silk Road Journey by Genjō Sanzō (602–664 CE) in Daylight, Moonlight Kitarō Live In Yakushiji

Abstract

Since receiving international acclaim in the 1980s for the soundtrack of the popular NHK/CCTV documentary series The Silk Road, Kitarō has tapped into the cultural heritage of Asia. In 2001, Kitarō presented a live performance in the 1,300 year-old temple of Yakushiji in Nara, Japan, selecting works from his repertoire to pay homage to the Buddhist monk Genjō Sanzō, a significant figure in religious history who undertook an epic 16-year journey westwards along the Silk Road in the seventh century. This article investigates how Kitarō portrays that journey in the Yakushiji performance. It first examines how three cultural components used in the homage – namely, Genjō Sanzō, the Silk Road and the concept of journey – are deeply connected to Japanese cultural heritage. It then analyses the performance to reveal how these components are delivered through Kitarō’s music to portray the physical and spiritual journey of the monk. It argues that by selecting music that links to his own associations with the Silk Road, Kitarō has created a concept album that not only unifies New Age music with elements of Japanese cultural and spiritual practice, but also makes them more accessible for the increasingly secularised contemporary society.

Keywords:

• Japan
• Kitarō
• music
• Silk Road
• Genjō Sanzō
• spirituality
• Yakushiji

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Genjō Sanzō (602–664 CE) is the Japanese reading of the monk’s Chinese name, 玄状三蔵, which is transliterated variously. In pinyin it appears as Xuán Zàng and in Wade-Giles as Hsüan-tsang. The Japanese reading is used for convenience here because it is the form used by Kitarō himself.

2. Kitarō was born Masanori Takahashi in Japan in 1953 but adopted the pseudonym “Kitarō” (lit. “man of abundant joy”) in 1978.

3. The term “New Age music” is most often associated with a music or desired lifestyle that is viewed as relaxed and unaffected by modern pressures, such as occurred in the hippy era or “New Age” of the 1960s (see Melton, 1988). Rather than engaging with definitions of New Age music (see Zrzavy, 1990) with which he is so often linked in the media, Kitarō talks about his “signature sound” (Bonzai, 2007, p. 38), commenting that synthesisers enable him to create this sound. For information on the range of keyboard synthesisers used by Kitarō in the development of his music see Diliberto (1988, p. 21) and Tingen (1996, p. 2).

4. An increasing number of musicians since the 1980s have had connections with the Silk Road. In 1998 Yo-Yo Ma established ‘The Silk Road Project’ devoted to the living arts of the people of the Silk Road lands (ten Grotenhuis, 2002; Knight, 2006, pp. 215–16), which includes education programs (Mukai, 2007) and the commissioning of new works by musicians from the regions (Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble, 2002). These works explore musical sounds of selected traditional genres or instruments.

5. See, for example, Kitaro (2003; 2005; 2007; 2010).

6. The Buddhist saint, Ku-Kai (774–835 CE) is recognised in Japan today as “the father of Japanese culture”.

7. Interview, Special Clip 4, Kitarō (2002b).

8. Kitarō Interview, Video Clip 5. Available at http://domo.com/Kitarō/, accessed 26 August 2010.

9. The series was jointly produced by Japanese NHK and Chinese CCTV public television and was seven years in the planning. It was first broadcast in Japan between 1979 and 1984 and subsequently seen in 38 countries worldwide. 380,000 copies of the videos were sold before it was released as a DVD series in 2005 (see Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, 2005). More than seven million records and CDs of the soundtrack have been sold (‘50 Years of NHK Television’. Available at http://www.nhk.or.jp/digitalmuseum/nhk50years_en/history/p20/index.html, accessed 1 January 2014).

10. For a listing see, for example, http://www.Kitarōrecords.com.

11. Electronic Music Old School website, ‘Kitarō’. Available at http://elektronicka-hudba.telotone.cz/umelci/Kitarō, accessed 24 March 2010.

12. Nevertheless, his work has not always been received positively. For example, one regular critic of Kitarō described his albums as “grandiose space operas” (Diliberto, 2001, p. 19).

13. The 11 tracks on the DVD have a total duration of 133 minutes. Another well-known track, ‘Heaven and Earth’, which was performed as an encore at Yakushiji, is presented as a Bonus Track with sound only on the DVD and as Track 12 on the CD.

14. For a discussion of the way in which Kitarō uses the Yakushiji performance to help audiences re-engage with Japanese traditions while negotiating their own identity, see Coaldrake (2012).

15. See, for example, http://hk.plm.org.cn/gnews/201193241897.html, accessed 24 June 2014. The earliest extant manuscripts of Genjō Sanzō’s famous Record of the Western Regions of the Great T’ang Dynasty (Da tang xiyu ji) dating from the seventh century and found hidden in the Dunhuang caves in China in the late nineteenth century are held in the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Subsequent editions have been created by Chinese scholars across the centuries and these are held in the National Library of China, while more recent publications in Japanese (Mizutani, 1971) and Chinese (Ji, 2000) ensure that the writings are also still available. Translations into European languages include an early French translation (Stanislas, 1857–58) and the most frequently cited Si-yu-ki (Beal, 1969[1894]).

16. For a discussion of the reception history of Genjō Sanzō’s writings see Deeg (2012).

17. A detailed discussion of the musical analysis of the 11 tracks is beyond the scope of this article.

18. Episode 16, The Silk Road: DVD Collection (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, 2005). For further discussion of Genjō Sanzō’s legacy see Wriggins (2004, pp. 211–27).

19. These texts are known in Japanese as the Jō yuishikiron (‘Treatise on the Realisation of Consciousness Only’) and a commentary on the sutra text known in Japanese as Yugashijiron (‘Discourse on the Stages of Concentration Practice’) (Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, 2008, p. 183).

20. Interview, Special Clip 4, Kitarō (2002b).

21. Kitarō himself has undertaken pilgrimages and has previously expressed the experience through music. Examples include the soundtrack for the NHK documentary on the pilgrimage route around the Japanese island of Shikoku (see Kitarō, 1999b), and the track on Noah’s Ark (Kitarō, 2002c) entitled ‘Pilgrimage’.

22. This was re-released on CD in Japan as Silk Road IV – Tenjiku (1983) and in the US as India (1985). Titles of compositions in subsequent albums also show direct influence from these experiences in India – e.g. ‘Dance of Sarasvati’ (Kitarō, 1995).

23. Genjō Sanzō traversed the Indus River in 664 CE on his journey back to China. He reports that when a storm suddenly arose it dangerously shook the boats so that 50 manuscripts and other precious items were lost (Wriggins, 2004, pp. 165–67).

24. See Episode 5, The Silk Road: The DVD Collection (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, 2005).

25. Dunhuang ( 敦煌 ) is the site of more than 490 caves carved into the mountain ridge with their sacred murals and sculptures dating from the third century CE. Dunhuang is the most commonly used appellation although Tunhuang is also used.

26. The subtitle of Kitarō’s Silk Road III (1981b) album is ‘Tunhuang’ [Dunhuang], and there is a photograph of Kitarō on the original LP cover standing at the entrance to one of these famous caves that the documentary team also visited.

27. For example: “The Blessed One said: ‘Do you also see, Ajita, those other flocks of birds, that singing with the voice of Buddha, make him known to whole buddha-field…’”, Sutra No. 130, The Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutra. English translation of the Sanskrit text (Gómez, 1996, p. 104).

28. Sutra No. 65, The Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sutra, English translation of the Sanskrit text (Gómez, 1996, p. 86).

29. This track has been edited to create a Prologue of just 1 min 15 sec duration. A longer version, which is 5 min 15 sec in duration, is found as Special Clip 1 on the DVD (Kitarō, 2002b).

30. For a detailed discussion of ‘Wa’/ ‘Peace’ as it represents the broader cultural flows of music and religion along the Silk Road that Genjō Sanzō witnessed as part of the experience of the modern listener, see Coaldrake (2012, pp. 56–57).