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- Convenor:
-
Fabio Rambelli
(University of California, Santa Barbara)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Fabio Rambelli
(University of California, Santa Barbara)
- Section:
- Religion and Religious Thought
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 25 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses the role of music in different religious contexts in the Edo and Meiji periods: the diffusion across Japan of rituals involving Gagaku, the creative appropriation of Bugaku in local festivals, and the Meiji-period creation of new Buddhist music under Protestant influence.
Long Abstract:
The academic study of Japanese religions tends to ignore the importance of music for religious practices and rituals. However, historical records are clear about the pervasive presence of music at temples and shrines; not only Buddhist vocal music (shōmyō), Kagura folk dances, and Nenbutsu performing arts related to Amida cults (nenbutsu geinō), but Gagaku (music and dance traditionally associated with the imperial court and the main temples-shrine complexes) also played an especially important role. In the early modern period, Gagaku was revived at the imperial court in Kyoto, adopted by the leading samurai houses, and performed at hundreds of regional temples and shrines. Bugaku dance in particular constituted the basis for the development of a number of regional performing arts; many Kagura are in fact local versions of Bugaku pieces transmitted from Kansai over centuries. In the modern period, in relation to the modernization process that also affected religious beliefs and practices, religious institutions came up with new forms of musical expression; most notably, Buddhist institutions abandoned Gagaku and promoted the creation of new types of music and songs that were inspired by newly imported Protestant liturgy.
This panel addresses various roles played by music in different religious contexts in the early modern and modern periods. The first paper outlines various aspects related to the wide diffusion of Gagaku (an elite art form par excellence) in the Tokugawa period. The second paper discusses the autonomous and creative appropriation of Bugaku in locales far away from the political and cultural centers from the late Muromachi period until the present. The third paper explores important innovations in Buddhist sacred music that occurred in the Meiji period as a consequence of modernization and inspired by Protestant hymns.
This panel aims at facilitating a discussion regarding a number of issues: the role of music in various aspects of Japanese religious history; music as a vehicle for the diffusion of cultural values and forms; and the connection between music and cultural heritage.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 25 August, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the diffusion of Gagaku throughout Japan in the Edo period for religious and ceremonial purposes, including discourses on the metaphysics of this music. It presents complex transformations between religious ritual, cultural heritage, philosophy, and politics behind Gagaku.
Paper long abstract:
Recent scholarship in Japan has uncovered a number of sources that present a stunning image of Gagaku (the traditional music and dance of the imperial court and the main temples and shrines) in the Edo period. It emerges that during that time Gagaku saw a remarkable renaissance. The three main orchestras (sanpō gakuso) at the imperial court in Kyoto, at Shitennōji in Osaka, and Kasuga-Kōfukuji in Nara were reorganized and their prerogatives defined. The imperial court promoted the revival of long-lost pieces. The Tokugawa Bakufu created two new orchestras, one at the Edo Palace and the other at Nikkō Tōshōgū, in order to carry out ceremonies for the Shogunal court. As a consequence, Gagaku began to be performed at most feudal domains. Finally, and importantly, hundreds of temples and shrines all over the country sent personnel to the main Gagaku orchestras to learn music and dance and invited visiting musicians for workshops.
The revival of Gagaku also affected intellectual history. Leading intellectuals (Ogyū Sorai, Kumazawa Banzan, Arai Hakuseki, Tominaga Nakamoto, and Matsudaira Sadanobu, among others) played Gagaku instruments and wrote about the metaphysics of music as related to their visions of Neo-Confucian governmentality, at times in discussion with Nativist scholars.
This paper presents the main aspects of these early modern developments. In particular, it will discuss the proliferation of rituals and ceremonies involving Gagaku and Bugaku at the imperial court, the Bakufu, samurai castles, and temples and shrines. At the same time, the cultural heritage of Gagaku being revived became cultural capital, which in turn acquired political valency. Commoners studying and playing Gagaku in the early nineteenth century were deeply steeped in court culture, something that supported the subsequent Meiji Restauration.
In this way, this paper will show how the originally religious and ritual value of Gagaku music was transformed into cultural heritage on the one hand and political capital on the other, in a process that still continues until today.
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers the development of theories of 'religious music' in Meiji era public discourse. In particular it examines the influence of Protestant Christian music making on Japanese Buddhist communities, and the ways that religious developed in relation to the Japanese nation state.
Paper long abstract:
The reintroduction of Christianity into Japan in the early Meiji era profoundly affected the musical practices of Japanese Buddhist communities. The widespread dissemination of Protestant Christian hymns from the early 1870s provided a strong incentive for Japanese Buddhist organizations to provide what Mervyn McLean has termed an 'adjustive response' (McLean 1986) to Protestant musical culture. Buddhist organizations quickly began to produce 'Bukkyō shōka' (Buddhist educational songs), and a new organization, the Bukkyō shōka-kai (Buddhist educational song group) published the first collection of new Buddhist songs in 1889. Within the context of these new musical activities, attempts also began to theorize the proper relationship between music, Buddhism, and religion in general, and how 'religious music' might fit within the contexts of individual religious life and the Japanese nation state. The earliest extended thesis of this kind came in 1894 with the publication of the Jōdo sect priest Iwai Chikai's (1863-1942) monograph Bukkyō Ongaku-ron (theory of Buddhist music). Iwai was schooled in Christianity and Western music theory, and his wide learning is reflected in his writing. Iwai's emphasis on Indian music reflects a more general interest in India among Japanese Buddhist thinkers from the late 19th century onwards. Following Iwai's initial monograph, we can see the development of conceptions of religious music both within religious publications and in the popular press. Wada Daien's extended article in the Shingon Buddhist newspaper Rokudai Shinpō in 1909, for example, positions Japanese Buddhist music within the context of world religious traditions. Conversely, non-religious publications such as the music magazine Ongaku no Tomo frequently featured articles by religious figures such as the Japanese Christians Ebina Danjō and Uchimura Kanzō that explored the importance of religious faith for secular music-making.
In this paper I examine the development of concepts of 'religious music' in Meiji era public discourse. I examine the period as one of vigorous exchange between various religious communities in Japan, and one that produced a discourse that frequently transcended individual religious sects, while developing ideas of the relationship between music, religion, and Japanese national identity.
Paper short abstract:
This paper addresses local development of Bugaku in northern Japan. Analyzing the pre-modern documents on the Bugaku performed for rain-making rituals and its canonical sources, it explores the creative processes that transformed Buddhist scriptures to give them a special religious performativity.
Paper long abstract:
The so-called "Bugaku of the Hayashi Family" (Hayashi-ke bugaku) handed down in Sagae (Yamagata Prefecture) is one of the most interesting examples of local adaptation of Bugaku music and dance. Legends report that musicians from the Hayashi Family (traditionally associated with the Gagaku orchestra of Shitennōji temple in Osaka) traveled to remote northeastern Japan following the famous Tendai priest Ennin (a.k.a. Jikaku Daishi, 794-864) and settled down there, around the area of the Jionji temple, for centuries one of the most important Buddhist institutions in Tohoku.
An interesting aspect of this Bugaku transmission legend is its strong relations to rain-making rituals as one of the most crucial practices throughout the Japanese religious traditions. The Bugaku kiroku, a document handed down by the Hayashi Family reports that they performed their own form of Bugaku at Jionji and at Risshakuji, throughout the Tokugawa period in order to pray for rain. At Jionji, rain making was carried out in relation to esoteric rituals dedicated for the future Buddha Miroku and for the Water God (Suiten, Skt. Varuna). One of the scriptures about Miroku, the Miroku jōshōgyō, describes goddesses performing music and dance in Maitreya's Tuṣita Heaven (Tosotsu-ten); however, how did that performing arts scene develop into a rain-making ceremony? This paper is an investigation on the creative processes that took place in that particular locale and transformed Buddhist scriptures to give them a special religious performativity; as a result, the scriptures' power to affect reality came to be based on their enactment in ritual performances involving music and dance.
In this paper, after an analysis of the three scriptures at the basis of the cult to Miroku (especially the Miroku jōshōgyō) and visual representations and rituals based on them, I will explore the theoretical reasons connecting Miroku to music/dance and rain-making rituals. Finally, I will discuss the dynamics that made this particular combination of doctrines, performing arts, and ritual effective in the religious world of a regional society.