i
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
ii 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
iii 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.
viii 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
ix 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.
x 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
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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.
1 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‟, Anne
Walthall (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 music in 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 „The
Heart of Japan‟: A History of Postwar Popular Music Focusing on Enka], (Tokyo: Kōbunsha Shinsho, 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.
2
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 „Confucian values‟ 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 popular culture‟, Chen Kuan-Hsing and Chua Beng Huat (eds.), Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Reader, (London: Routledge, 2007), pp.115-7.
3
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.
4 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 page 36.
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
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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 for graciously 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 Toshirō, 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 of Chicago 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 Music Fandom 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 Adoring Audience, pp.46-48; and Lawrence Grossberg, „Is There a Fan in the House? The Affective Sensibility 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
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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, transposable
dispositions, 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 express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them‟. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 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 Cultural Studies 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 popular music‟, 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.
12
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‟ , Harris Breslow and Aris Mousoutzanis (eds.), Cybercultures: Mediations of Community, Culture, Politics, (Amsterdam, New York: Rodolpi: 2012), p.77.
13
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: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 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 and analyzing 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
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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 Toshirō 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 We Study the Expanding Music Culture?], (Tokyo, Japan: Keisō Shobo, 2008). pp. i-ii.
15
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, marketed 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
16
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 Much Better], (Tokyo: KK Longsellers, 1993).
42 A kissa can roughly be translated as „café‟, although kissas are typically older
establishments 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 (eds.), Karaoke Around 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
17
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 consisted 86% of karaoke snacks‟ customers. Zenkoku Karaoke Jigyosha Kyokai [All Japan Association of Karaoke Entrepreneurs], Karaoke Hakusho [White Paper on Karaoke], (Tokyo: Zenkoku Karaoke Jigyosha Kyokai, 1996). Cited in Oku Shinobu, „Karaoke and Middle-aged and Older Women‟, Mitsui and Hosokawa (eds.), Karaoke Around the World, pp.54-55.
18
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 and Michael 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 concise argument about the problems of ethnographer identity in the fieldsite.
19
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, transgressions 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.
20
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.
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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 rural 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 of in-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
23
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.
24 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.
25
prominently utilised by publications such as Okada Maki‟s „Musical Characteristics of Enka‟ 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‟, International
Journal 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 social upheaval of 1960s and 1970s Japan in Chapter Two.
26
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.
27
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
