A Japanese Zero-Hour? Postwar Music and the Re-Making of the Past
While the past decade saw several studies that closely examined the de-nazification attempts the post-war German music scenes underwent (Hein-Kremer 1996; Beal 2000; Monod 2005), the “purging processes” in Japanese classical music following Japan 's defeat in 1945 have not yet come under full scrutiny. This paper attempts to reconstruct the overall climate under which Japanese musicians strove for a fresh start in various manners and for various motivations--a start that may be called a Japanese version of Stunde Null --, through examination of documents related to organizational changes, programming policies, and, most importantly, individual composers' personal attempts to re-define themselves.
While the accusations made in late 1945 by Ginji Yamane, a prominent music critic, of Kosaku Yamada as a “war criminal” were, and are, a well-advertised episode, the fact that no musicians nor musical entrepreneurs were forced to resign from their posts in the GHQ-led postwar democratizing policies indicate that Japan missed an opportunity equivalent to the visible and symbolic closure experienced by Germany. For example, none of the high-ranking members of the Japan Musical Culture Society, which played a central role in the instrumentalization of music for war propaganda (“Our Music Is Our Arms”), suffered career damage after their close collaborations with the Government during the war years had been revealed.
In this paper, a particular emphasis shall be given on examining how (and, as a matter of fact, if) the public policies in music related to programming and funding during the years immediately following 1945 impacted the ways in which composers proved their music worthy of a new Japan.
Fuyuko Fukunaka specializes in 20th- and 21st-century music. She earned a Ph.D. in Musicology from New York University (2003). While her doctoral dissertation was on the music of Wolfgang Rihm, her recent research topics include those related to postwar Japanese Western music. She has published articles both in English and Japanese. She currently teaches at Keio University in Tokyo , Japan .