As is well known, John Cage's appropriations of Japanese culture had a profound impact on his aesthetics and compositional methods. In addition to his interactions with D. T. Suzuki, he remained connected to Japanese individuals and culture throughout his lifetime. One of the most decisive of these connections came through his teaching of Toshi Ichiyanagi, then a young composer who had long admired his work. As a member of the Fluxus movement, Ichiyanagi and others helped to explore Cage's call for an art that is identical with life. For his part, Cage responded to Fluxus with a series of pieces in which, more than ever before, he dissolved all the conventions of the musical work: changing the typical venues for its performance, ignoring the idea of duration as the defining element of the work, and significantly expanding its content. My paper clarifies some of the fertile cross-relationships among Cage, Japan, Ichiyanagi, and Fluxus. First, I consider the effect of Cage's aesthetic on several Ichiyanagi works from the 1960s, as well as Cage's Fluxus-inspired works and their impact on the understanding of his later career. Finally, I turn to Cage's interactions with Japanese culture and Fluxus in his final years, concentrating on his late works Ryoanji (1983-85); his performance of the Fluxus-like One3 (1989) in connection with his award of the Kyoto Prize; and aspects of Two2 (1989), a composition that Cage described as a renga.

Rob Haskins holds a D.M.A. in harpsichord performance and literature from the Eastman School of Music and is completing his dissertation on John Cage's Number Pieces for the Ph. D. in Musicology at ESM. He has read papers at local and national conferences and was the keynote speaker for the John Cage Festival "I Have Nothing To Say and I Am Saying It" at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada. He has been awarded grants and fellowships from many organizations, including Meet the Composer, the Music Library Association, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; he is currently supported by the University of Rochester's Raymond N. Ball Dissertation Fellowship. As a performer, Haskins's repertoire includes Baroque and twentieth-century music for a variety of keyboard instruments as well as spoken word pieces by Cage; recent appearances include an evening-length presentation of Cage's I-VI subsequently authorized by the John Cage Trust (who holds copyright to all performed versions of these materials) and a fully-staged performance of Cage's Song Books, which he produced.