Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, Music

This thesis and professional project aims to showcase the value of Japanese-composed trombone repertoire to American classical music, a field that is currently dominated by works composed in Europe and the United States. The professional project includes a series of three professionally produced videos of selected repertoire and a digital catalog of Japanese-composed pieces. The videos provide a public platform for this genre and target an American audience. The research sheds light on the cultural and musical nuances of Japanese classical repertoire and showcases works that diverge from traditional Western compositions while embodying Japan's deep cultural heritage and modernization. The chosen repertoire includes compositions by Megumi Kanda, Utako Yuza, and Keiko Takashima. These works highlight the unique elements of Japanese classical music. The objective of this thesis is to increase visibility and accessibility to Japanese-composed works and to ultimately increase their study and performance by American trombonists. The research narrative explores the context of classical music education in the United States and the development of classical music in Japan. The lack of diversity of repertoire in American higher education and the barriers to accessing Japanese classical music repertoire is also highlighted. Expanding the curriculum to include Japanese classical music would introduce new musical elements and cultural diversity. By promoting inclusivity and diversity within the classical music community, this thesis advocates for a broader understanding of musical traditions and encourages trombonists to embrace a more international perspective in their repertoire selection and performance.

Committee: Lucas Rego Borges (Advisor) Subjects: Asian Studies; Music

MA, Kent State University, 2019, College of the Arts / School of Music, Hugh A. Glauser

In this thesis, I examine the emerging field of ecomusicology, past, present, and future. I explore the subject of 'what is music' within the context of ecomusicology and suggest musicians and non-musicians alike often place sounds within a musical hierarchy. Humanly organized sounds are viewed as most musical, while natural sounds and unorganized sound are viewed as less musical. I posit ecomusicologists conceptualize music as a spectrum rather than a hierarchy and in doing so, place a higher value on nature than those who ascribe to a hierarchy of music. I provide models for each of these views of music and address varying gender identities' relationship with nature and the model to which they ascribe. Finally, I broaden the scope of ecomusicology by narrowing in on a specific location, Japan, and a specific instrument, the shakuhachi. I address how Japanese culture views music and nature ecomusicologically in comparison to Western thought, and I compare gender issues in Japan and surrounding the shakuhachi with similar issues in the West. I posit that the Japanese shakuhachi is an ideal advocate for the environment and for women due to its philosophical and gendered history, playing technique, repertoire, and physicality as the roots and stalk of bamboo.

Committee: Andrew Shahriari Dr. (Advisor); Jennifer Johnstone Dr (Committee Member); Joe Clark Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Literature; Asian Studies; Environmental Education; Environmental Philosophy; Environmental Studies; Ethics; Ethnic Studies; Folklore; Gender; Gender Studies; Geography; Music; Music Education; Performing Arts; Philosophy

Doctor of Musical Arts, The Ohio State University, 2019, Music

Despite the significant number of compositions by influential Japanese composers, Japanese flute repertoire remains largely unknown outside of Japan. Apart from standard unaccompanied works by Toru Takemitsu and Kazuo Fukushima, other Japanese flute compositions have yet to establish a permanent place in the standard flute repertoire. The purpose of this document is to broaden awareness of Japanese flute compositions through the discussion, analysis, and evaluation of substantial flute sonatas by three important Japanese composers: Ikuma Dan (1924-2001), Hikaru Hayashi (1931-2012), and Akira Tamba (b. 1932). A brief history of traditional Japanese flute music, a summary of Western influences in Japan's musical development, and an overview of major Japanese flute compositions are included to provide historical and musical context for the composers and works in this document. Discussions on each composer's background, flute works, and compositional style inform the following flute sonata analyses, which reveal the unique musical language and characteristics that qualify each work for inclusion in the standard flute repertoire. These analyses intend to increase awareness and performance of other Japanese flute compositions specifically and lesser-known repertoire generally. An appendix containing a list of hundreds of accompanied and unaccompanied Japanese flute works promotes further diversification of the standard flute repertoire.

Committee: Katherine Borst Jones (Advisor); Arved Ashby (Committee Member); Caroline Hartig (Committee Member); Karen Pierson (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), Bowling Green State University, 2014, Contemporary Music

Francois Rosse (b. 1945) is a Bordeaux-based improvising pianist and prolific composer who has received relatively little scholarly attention. He has written over one hundred works involving the saxophone, and in many cases, featuring the saxophone, yet his music is not widely studied or performed in North America. This document draws attention to Rosse's music for saxophone by tracing the application of hybridity, orality, and primitivism in Bear's Trio, Nishi Asakusa, and Orients, his Japanese-influenced chamber pieces with saxophone. These concepts are presented within relevant discourses, as prominent features of Western art music history and saxophone repertory, and as philosophically motivated practices that form the core of Rosse's approach to music-making and composition. An overview of relevant Japanese cultural elements, such as history, art forms, aesthetics, and spirituality, provides the necessary groundwork for identifying the manifestations of Japanese influence in Bear's Trio, Nishi Asakusa, and Orients. By surveying Rosse's incorporation of Japanese tradition and spirituality through the tripartite theoretical lens of hybridity, orality, and primitivism, this document offers a valid and useful schema for experiencing and interpreting his music.

Committee: John Sampen (Advisor); Conor Nelson (Committee Member); Marcus Zagorski (Committee Member); Donald Callen (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

M.M., University of Cincinnati, 2003, College-Conservatory of Music : Clarinet

One of the more striking aspects of exoticism in Puccini's Madama Butterfly is the extent to which the composer incorporated Japanese musical material in his score. From the earliest discussion of the work, musicologists have identified many Japanese melodies and musical characteristics that Puccini used in this work. Some have argued that this approach indicates Puccini's preoccupation with creating an authentic Japanese setting within his opera; others have maintained that Puccini wanted to produce an exotic atmosphere rather than an accurate musical portrayal of Japan; still others have regarded Puccini's use of Japanese melodies as a manifestation of musical orientalism, a Western, privileged depiction of musically and culturally foreign and inferior Others. Although these studies represent important contributions to Puccini scholarship, many of them fail to acknowledge the exceptional conditions of music production in Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The goal of this study is to rectify this situation by providing a reassessment, both cultural and analytic, of Puccini's use of Japanese melodies that takes into account the specific historic and cultural contexts in which these melodies emerged and traveled to the composer's hands. First, I will survey the existing research in order to outline the current comprehension and evaluation of Puccini's adoption of Japanese music. Second, I will provide my own analyses of Puccini's score in relation to contemporaneous musical activities in Japan in an attempt to situate the work within a larger cultural and historical phenomenon of the musical exchange between Japan and the West. My analyses consist of three chapters, each concerning Puccini's use of a particular song or a collection of pieces in Madama Butterfly. They are "Miyasan," a popular Japanese military song from the early Meiji Era, "Kimigayo," the Japanese national anthem, and Nippon Gakufu, two volumes of piano arrangements of Japan (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dr. Hilary Poriss (Advisor) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Media and Communication

While scholars from a wide range of disciplines have analyzed thematic development, iconography, narrative, characterization, and animation style of Japanese anime, the music of anime programs is largely ignored or trivialized. This dissertation fills the gap in critical intercultural communication and media studies research by examining original anime soundtracks and their roles as narrative devices. Anime is explored as a site of global cultural resistance, while maintaining articulations of gender and cultural ideals in their stories and reflected in the lyrics of their theme songs. Employing critical intercultural communication, critical media studies, Affect Theory, with textual analysis and rhetorical criticism, this dissertation analyzes how music is intrinsic to the narrative and an expression of cultural values in anime. Analysis focuses on Hibike! Euphonium (2015-present) by Tatsuya Ishihara and Naoko Yamada, from the studio of Kyoto Animation, a slice-of-life drama involving the coming-of-age stories of high schoolers in a competitive concert band, and Vivi -Furoraito Aizu Songu- (2021) by Tappei Nagatsuki and Eiji Umehara, produced by Wit Studio, which follows an autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AI) programmed to entertain humans with her voice, and who discovers her humanity through music while trying to save the world from destruction. Each anime illustrates how musical scores, lyrics, and instrumentation are incorporated into narratives of gender, agency, culture, and humanity. The dissertation also analyzes compositional style, structure, instrumentation, and lyrics encoded with hegemonic messages and constructions of gendered, raced, and cultural distinctions. It provides a critical analysis of how music is used as a narrative tool in media and communication studies involving anime and how the rhetorical messages encoded in texts, via lyrics and instrumentation, are forms of intercultural communication of Japanese anime viewed by a Western aud (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lara Lengel Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Alberto González Ph.D. (Committee Member); Radhika Gajjala Ph.D. (Committee Member); Wendy Watson Ph.D. (Other) Subjects: American Studies; Asian Studies; Communication; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Music; Rhetoric

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, History

During the Allied Occupation of Japan, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) Douglas MacArthur set forth on a mission to Americanize Japan. One way SCAP decided this could be done was by utilizing forms of media that were already popular in Japan, particularly the radio. The Far East Network (FEN), a network of American military radio and television stations in Japan, Okinawa, Guam, and the Philippines, began to broadcast American country & western music. By the early 1950s, Japanese country & western ensembles would begin to form, which initiated the evolution toward modern J-pop. During the first two decades of the Cold War, performers of various postwar subgenres of early Japanese rock (or J-rock), including country & western, rockabilly, kayokyoku, eleki, and Group Sounds, would attempt to break into markets in the West. While some of these performers floundered, others were able to walk side-by-side with several Western greats or even become stars in their own right, such as when Kyu Sakamoto produced a number one hit in the United States with his “Sukiyaki” in 1963. The way that these Japanese popular music performers were perceived in the West, primarily in the United States, was rooted in centuries of Orientalist preconceptions about Japanese people, Japanese culture, and Japan that had recently been recalibrated to reflect the ethos of the Cold War.

Committee: Walter Grunden Ph.D. (Advisor); Jeremy Wallach Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Asian Studies; History

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Contemporary Music

In an increasingly globalized community, a composer's cultural heritage may or may not manifest itself in their compositions. Conversely, manifest influences from different cultures may not coincide with the composer's identity. This document examines the piano works of three active Japanese composers, Dai Fujikura (b. 1977), Jo Kondo (b. 1947), and Joji Yuasa (b. 1929), through the lens of cultural influence. Analyses of representative pieces are contextualized in relation to the composers' opinions on the importance or relevance of writing music that embodies their own identity and cultural heritage. Examples of Japanese elements incorporated into Western-based composition include a circular rather than linear conception of time, ma as manifest through relationships and dualities, pulse-driven organization of rhythm, nature references, noise as an inseparable component of performance, and other extra-musical considerations. A brief overview of identity and globalization, along with an examination of numerous historical texts of both Western and Japanese origin, provide context for identifying these Japanese elements. Orientalism and musical exoticism provide additional grounding in scholarly work from Western sources about Eastern cultures, focusing specifically on music. These analyses offer insight into the differing ways cultural influences manifest in Japanese composers as a starting place. It is my hope that performers recognize the importance of seeking out the composer's intentions to align the performer's interpretation with the composer's artistic vision.

Committee: Nora Engebretsen-Broman Ph.D. (Advisor); Jeremy Wayne Wallach Ph.D. (Other); Mikel Kuehn Ph.D. (Committee Member); Marilyn Shrude Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts; Music

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2011, College-Conservatory of Music: Voice

Japanese composer Minoru Miki (b. 1930) uses his music as a vehicle to promote cross-cultural awareness and world peace, while displaying a self-proclaimed preoccupation with ethnic mixture, which he calls konketsu. This document intends to be a performance guide to Miki's Sohmon III: for Soprano, Marimba and Piano (1988). The first chapter provides an introduction to the composer and his work. It also introduces methods of intercultural and artistic borrowing in the Japanese arts, and it defines the four basic principles of Japanese aesthetics. The second chapter focuses on the interpretation and pronunciation of Sohmon III's song text. The first part of Chapter 2 introduces and analyzes source poetry taken from the Man'yoshu, giving special consideration to topics of intercultural and artistic borrowing, as well as identifying and explaining the use of Japanese poetic devises, such as makurakotoba and kakekotoba [epithets and homonyms]. The remainder of Chapter 2 provides general rules of Japanese diction, focusing on their application in Sohmon III. The third chapter provides musical examples of influence from traditional Japanese music upon Sohmon III. Similarities arise between the formal structure of Sohmon III and that of the instrumental ensemble genre of gagaku. The vocal and instrumental parts of Sohmon III also show influence from jiuta and nagauta traditional song styles, as well as from the folk song styles of warabeuta and shoka. The latter portion of Chapter 3 discusses Miki's compositional desire for konketsu and compares it with the terms “synthesis” and “fusion,” which have appeared in contemporary musicological studies of cultural hybridity. Additional materials include three appendices: Appendix A: An IPA Transcription of Sohmon III, Appendix B: A Glossary of Japanese Terms, and Appendix C: A Compilation of Miki's Vocal Works.

Committee: Jeongwon Joe PhD (Committee Chair); William McGraw MM (Committee Member); Barbara Paver MM (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2010, College-Conservatory of Music: Voice

Japanese composer Minoru Miki (b. 1930) uses his music as a vehicle to promote cross-cultural awareness and world peace, while displaying a self-proclaimed preoccupation with ethnic mixture, which he calls konketsu. This document intends to be a performance guide to Miki's Sohmon III: for Soprano, Marimba and Piano (1988). The first chapter provides an introduction to the composer and his work. It also introduces methods of intercultural and artistic borrowing in the Japanese arts, and it defines the four basic principles of Japanese aesthetics. The second chapter focuses on the interpretation and pronunciation of Sohmon III's song text. The first part of Chapter 2 introduces and analyzes source poetry taken from the Man yoshu, giving special consideration to topics of intercultural and artistic borrowing, as well as identifying and explaining the use of Japanese poetic devises, such as makurakotoba and kakekotoba[epithets and homonyms]. The remainder of Chapter 2 provides general rules of Japanese diction, focusing on their application in Sohmon III. The third chapter provides musical examples of influence from traditional Japanese music upon Sohmon III. Similarities arise between the formal structure of Sohmon III and that of the instrumental ensemble genre of gagaku. The vocal and instrumental parts of Sohmon III also show influence from jiuta and nagauta traditional song styles, as well as from the folk song styles of warabeuta and shoka. The latter portion of Chapter 3 discusses Miki's compositional desire for konketsu and compares it with the terms “synthesis” and “fusion,” which have appeared in contemporary musicological studies of cultural hybridity. Additional materials include three appendices: Appendix A: An IPA Transcription of Sohmon III, Appendix B: A Glossary of Japanese Terms, and Appendix C: A Compilation of Miki's Vocal Works.

Committee: Jeongwon Joe PhD (Committee Chair); William McGraw MM (Committee Member); Barbara Paver MM (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Music Ethnomusicology

The shakuhachi is a bamboo flute that came to Japan from China during the Nara Period (646-794 CE) and has since been affiliated with traditional Japanese culture. Thanks to the processes of globalization, the shakuhachi and other indigenous Japanese traditions have flourished in other parts of the world, especially in the United States. In the U.S., a shakuhachi subculture has developed in recent decades, consisting of shakuhachi camps, online and in-person forums, lessons with licensed teachers, and performances/concerts. This shakuhachi subculture is flourishing and growing intensely; however, there is very little ethnomusicological research on this growing phenomenon that is making its mark in the United States. Within the past two years, I have been investigating this subculture by joining the community as a student shakuhachi player, as a member of the shakuhachi web forums, and by attending shakuhachi camps and performances. This ethnomusicological project explores the dynamics of the shakuhachi subculture by tracing the shakuhachi's history to and practices within the United States. It also provides an explanation of the instrument's transnationality by highlighting the different dichotomies and boundaries that are transcended, “landscaped,” and “glocalized.”

Committee: David Harnish (Advisor); Katherine Meizel (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2009, Music Ethnomusicology

The fictional Japanese TV drama series, Nodame Cantabile, based on the lives of Western art music performance majors in a Japanese music conservatory, has successfully reached out and appealed to the Japanese common audience since it was first aired in Japan in October, 2006. It has also attracted an international following, been aired in various Asian countries (including Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia), and found mass audiences beyond national boundaries. Why is a TV drama depicting such a specific group (i.e. music majors) able to cater to a mass audience in Japan and even to millions of viewers beyond Japan? In this thesis, I will argue that Nodame Cantabile not only has the typical prerequisites to be a successful Japanese TV drama, it also enchants its spectators by employing a unique, almost unprecedented approach—using Western art music as the thematic music and main soundtrack—which results in a whimsical, sensational, cross-cultural success. By contrast, most music in similar drama series uses Japanese pop music and electronic music. I will decode how this drama attracts mass audiences by interpreting/elucidating it from different perspectives, including: 1) how it portrays/reflects the Japanese music conservatory culture; 2) how it reflects the long-term popularity of certain Western art music compositions in/among Japanese music consumers; and, most interestingly; 3) how this drama further changes the perception of mass audiences, especially fans in Taiwan, about Western art music, and serves to increase the popularity of this music in Asian countries.

Committee: David Harnish PhD (Committee Chair); Robert Fallon PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Music