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Paper short abstract:

Many of Miyagi Michio's more than 700 compositions for koto and other hōgaku instruments draw on Western music to transform traditional Japanese music. His career as a performer and composer culminated in a trip to Europe in 1953 where he experienced European music in situ for the first time.

Paper long abstract:

Koto performer, composer and educator Miyagi Michio's more than 700 compositions for koto and other hōgaku instruments utilize Western music playing techniques, timbres, and compositional techniques and forms. The resulting works transformed traditional Japanese music. His career as a performer and composer culminated in a trip to Europe in 1953 where he experienced European music in situ for the first time.

Born in the foreign sector of Kobe in 1894, Miyagi was surrounded by Western music streaming from residences and public places. While studying koto and shamisen with a local master, he pursued knowledge of Western music through recordings, lessons on various Western instruments, and interactions with scholars and performers of Western music, both Japanese and visiting Europeans and Americans.

From his earliest compositions, Miyagi incorporated playing and compositional techniques derived from Western music in pursuit of his goal of modernizing koto music. Miyagi came of age during the Taisho era, by which time the full effects of the Ongaku Torishirabe Gakari's late nineteenth-century decision that only Western music would be taught in the schools had nurtured two generations of Western music consumers, creating an audience receptive to Miyagi's new hybrid compositions.

Miyagi held the first concert of his own compositions in Tokyo in 1919 to critical acclaim from Western-trained scholars and musicians. Through collaborations with influential musicians from both the Western and Japanese musical traditions, within a few years his works were embraced by musicians from both sides. Miyagi's collaboration in 1932 with French violinist Renee Chemet on a recording of "Haru no Umi" brought his work to the attention of a sizeable European audience, which led to further opportunities for him to meet many prominent musicians from Europe when they toured Japan.

In this paper I will discuss Miyagi's lifelong encounters with Western music and musicians, culminating with his one and only visit to Europe in 1953. I will explore how Miyagi's encounters with Western music in France and England influenced three of his compositions: "Rondon no Yoru no Ame," "Eihei no Kotai," and Nichiren.