Sensing the music: oral mnemonics as a technique of affective sensitization in Japanese “court music”

Abstract

Inspired by a broader “sensory turn” in anthropology, research on Japanese traditional performing arts has recently acknowledged the intense physicality of doing fieldwork with actors and musicians. Moving from the similarly situated perspective of ethnographic apprenticeship, this article shows how shōga, the oral mnemonic system used in Japanese court music (gagaku), can function as a technique of affective sensitization. While past studies have successfully explained the efficacy of similar “acoustic-iconic mnemonic systems,” untangling their concealed logic, this research highlights the ways in which shōga operates on the level of affect, enabling practitioners to feel with each other. Analyzing how members of the group Nanto Gakuso use it to detect resonances between the kinaesthetic qualities of playing and dancing, the article maintains that shōga is employed not only as a mnemonic device, but also as a sophisticated means of embodied music transmission.

Keywords:

• Gagaku
• shōga
• oral mnemonics
• apprenticeship
• affect

Acknowledgements

My deepest gratitude goes to Kasagi Kan’ichi sensei and the members of Nanto Gakuso, for their patient guidance. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments that helped improve the text. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, Kakenhi Grant 17F17760.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See Basso (1996).

2 Excellent introductions to gagaku in English include Garfias (1975) and Nelson (2008a,b).

3 On the perceived “exoticism” of gagaku, see Lancashire (2003).

4 See Nelson (2008b, 50–52) for details on gagaku instrumentation.

5 For details on Nanto Gakuso’s history, see Kasagi (2014).

6 For a useful bibliographical review of anthropological approaches to affect and Affect Theory, see White (2017).

7 I thank one anonymous reviewer for emphasizing the importance of apprenticeship as a link between anthropological theory and fieldwork on affect.

8 Informed by a similar sensibility, Tomie Hahn’s Sensational Knowledge (2007) stands out as a pioneering attempt to “reveal how a culture’s transmission processes prioritize practitioners’ attendance to certain sensoria… and how the transmission of sensory knowledge can shape dancers” belonging to the Nihon buyō tradition (Hahn 2007, 5).

9 For an overview of shōga in English, see Kamisangō (1986). For more details and a comparative approach to the topic, see Fujita (1986) and Hughes (1989, 2000, 2002). As noticed by Fujita (1986, 241) and Hirano (1989, 97), the scholar Yokomichi Mario was the first to propose the use of the neologism kuchishōga in order to differentiate the mnemonic system of Japanese traditional performing arts from the homograph pronounced shōka, which denotes “song pieces for pupils in elementary school anthologized during the Meiji era (1868–1912)” (Fujita 1986, 250). In this article, I decided to employ the more common term shōga because this is the word consistently used by my research participants.

10 Tanabe (1984, 519), for instance, considers shōga “the vocalization of instrumental music.”

11 David Hughes’s comparative research has demonstrated the cross-cultural validity of shōga (see Hughes 1989). The fact that non-Japanese apprentices tend to deny the efficacy of oral mnemonics and to belittle its practice has probably less to do with the phonetic properties of Japanese vis-à-vis other languages, and more with a (knowingly or unknowingly) culturally acquired disposition towards practices expected to be more or less effective in the acquisition of certain skills. The idea that singing a melody without even touching a musical instrument can be helpful in the concrete performance of that instrument might be particularly foreign to the cultural context that characterizes the “classically trained conservatory musician,” who is expected to start practicing on his or her instrument as early and as often as possible.

12 This is the definition of "solmization" provided in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (quoted in Hughes 2000, 93).

13 For a partially related attempt to go beyond static portrayals of movement and sensing, see Massumi’s introductory piece Concrete is as Concrete Doesn’t (2002, 1–21).

14 For an essential contribution to the study of affect, see Massumi (2002, 23–45). For recent introductions to “affect theory” and its related “affective turn,” see also Clough and Halley (2007), and Gregg and Seigworth (2010).

15 My argument is partially based on Fujita’s seminal intuition that trained individuals listen to melodic lines “not only by the evocation of sung shōga but also by the memory of bodily movements” (1986, 249).

16 A small annual fee gives access to the weekly and monthly rehearsals, as well as to most of the group’s local performances.

17 All interviews were conducted in confidentiality, and the names of interviewees are withheld by mutual agreement.

18 On becoming an amateur through the entanglement of emplacement, enactment and enskilment, see Giolai (2016).

19 Bugaku, the ancient dances accompanied by gagaku music, can be subdivided into two groups: Dances of the Left (samai), which mainly include pieces transmitted to Japan from Tang-period China and original compositions by Heian-period Japanese; and Dances of the Right (umai), comprising pieces of diverse regional origins, but mainly hailing from the Three Kingdoms of Korea. Today, both groups consist of just over 20 items (Endō 2008, 84; Nelson 2008b). In terms of stylistic differences, Wolz (1971, 32) has noted that Dances of the Left tend to present stronger, more complicated movements, while Dances of the Right are characterized by rounder, more fluid movements. The most complete study of bugaku available in English is Carl Wolz’s Bugaku: Japanese Court Dance (1971).

20 The following account is based on participant observation carried out over several years and represents a “typical” rehearsal scenario.

21 Useful information on the piece and a short clip can be found at http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/dglib/contents/learn/edc22/sakuhin/bugaku/s2.html (Accessed January 2019). For a “standard” recording by the group Tōkyō Gakuso, see Tōkyō Gakuso and Reigakusha (2010).

22 For transnotations into Labanotation of the 41 basic positions and movements of the Dances of the Right, see Wolz (1971, 92–118).

23 For pictures and audio clips, see the “Percussion” section at https://ccrma.stanford.edu/groups/gagaku/index-en.html (Kapuscinski and Rose 2013) (accessed January 2019).

24 For a short introduction to gagaku notations, see Nelson (2008b, 52).

25 Despite Shiba’s indication “Allegretto” on the staff notation in Figure 2, the actual performance time of a half note is less than 30 beats per minute!

26 Nelson similarly notices the difference between purely instrumental pieces performed without the dancers on stage (kangen) and the bugaku style, in which “the emphasis…is on providing a strong and steady beat at a quicker tempo for the dancer or dancers to move against” (2008b, 58–59).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrea Giolai

Andrea Giolai is a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto. His research examines embodied methods of music transmission in Japanese traditional performing arts, canon formation, and sonic explorations of the past.