Paper short abstract:

This paper examines Japanese Tango musicians in China's popular dancehalls between the 1920s and 1940s. The presentation places such migration dynamics under the political and historical lens of Japan's longing for and imaginations of 'the continents' at this time.

Paper long abstract:

Between the 1920s and 1940s, many Japanese Tango musicians migrated to work at China's cosmopolitan dancehalls. The international city of Shanghai, for instance, was considered by Japanese musicians as a musically 'authentic' place to work and to polish skills as musicians. This was seen as a great contrast to Japan at this time, where much of the 'foreign' musical knowledge was acquired through imitating recordings. Many Japanese musicians migrated to China's cosmopolitan cities to 'learn through working at the dancehalls': they also called such Chinese cities 'the places where one could make a fortune at a single stroke.' Influenced by the Japanese colonial imaginaries of China, Japan's fascination for the internationally renowned cosmopolitan cities of China has been discussed not only as an economically and artistically driven admiration, but as a form of Orientalism. Instead, this paper proposes that the Japanese fascination for the Chinese cities at this time had much wider historical meanings. Key contexts here are Japan's fascination for the 'continents', South America and China, and the mass Japanese immigration to South America that peaked between the 1920s and 1940s, promoted by the Japanese government's pro-emigration campaigns. In this political context Tango came to represent, among other genres, the sound of 'South America', strengthening many Japanese people's powerful longing for South America. By examining Japanese Tango musicians' performance activities in China through this lens, this presentation reveals the ways in which the Japan-China relations and Tango came to influence the Japanese emigration politics in the first half of the twentieth century.