Bizen Woodcutter

 A Japanese incense burner in the shape of a woodcutter. Bizen ware, 18th century,  notice the "metallic" glaze.  It belonged to my father, one the favourite pieces in his collection.  Because he couldn't get proper incense after he emigrated, he made his own from scented woods and oils.

Bubbling brew : Turnage Hibiki, Prom Ravel Debussy Kazushi Ono

Mark-Anthony Turnage Hibiki (2014) at the BBC Proms, with Kazushi Ono and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sally Matthews, Mihoko Fujimura, the New London Children's Choir and the Finchley Children's Music Group, preceded by Debussy and Ravel Piano Concerto in G major with Inon Barnatan, so beautifully played that even someone like me, more into voice and orchestra, could throroughly enjoy.

Ono conducted the premiere of Turnage's Hibiki in Tokyo in December 2016 with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra of which he is Music Director.  Hibiki is a substantial work for large orchestra, two soloists and childrens' choir. According to the publishers Boosey & Hawkes, it "offers consolation after loss – whether from war, earthquake or tsunami". That's a tall order, almost impossible to fulfil.  Consolation is trivial band aid in the face of such extreme horror.   It's meaningless unless we reflect on the causes of catastrophe and resolve that such things should never, as far as possible, happen again.

Numerous Japanese writers, composers, film makers and artists have reflected on and examined the issues arising from war and nuclear annihilation.  Indeed, you probably can't be an East Asian  intellectual and not ponder 150 years of war and traumatic social change, not only in Japan but in China and the rest of Asia.  Masao Ohki's Hiroshima Symphony, written only 7 years after the bombs fell, is graphically descriptive (read more here) . Ikuma Dan's Hiroshima Symphony (1985) is even more sophisticated.  It's an important piece of world significance. Please read more here)

There's no reason why western composers shouldn't engage with these subjects. We're all part of humanity.  But it's difficult to approach specifically Japanese aspects without an understanding of the cultural, social and historical background.  Mark-Anthony Turnage is good on music with social conscience. Once I got over the shock value of Anna Nicole, I grew to love its insights into consumer-obsessed society and the degradation of those who buy into the scam. Read more HERE  But Anna Nicole is a western icon, and Turnage likes Americana. That doesn't necessarily mean he can't write about other cultures, but I'm not sure how to take Hibiki. Does it penetrate much beneath the surface? Is it enough to address the many long-term implications of Fukushima simply by repeating the name over and over? I'm no composer but I'd rather that the music itself spoke, not the words.  No disrespect to Turnage. Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem had so little to do with Japan that he really should not have compromised himself by taking the money.  It would probably take a Beethoven or Bach to write something truly transcendant. "Consolation" isn't enough.

Kazushi Ono did Turnage's Hibiki more than justice. From the BBC SO he drew some very committed playing. They don't do as much Turnage as they should and this is a bit more than typical Turnage, so all honours to them.  Hibiki unfolds over seven sections, like a postcard book..  But Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't actually lead to Tohoku or the Tsunami or to Fukushima.  Natural disasters aren't man made or specific to any one country.  Nuclear power on its own isn't evil, it's misused and abused. As anyone who's ever watched Japanese movies should know.  See my piece on Godzilla and the Tsunami,  The seven parts together don't cohere. This weakens the impact of the whole and undercuts the claim that it's an act of consolation.  Wisely, Ono marked the breaks with long silences, so each section can be heard alone, without a thread.  Unfortunately, substantial parts of this year's Proms audiences are obsessed with clapping any chance they get. They don't care enough about music to pay attention and listen.

The first two sections are named after Iwate and Miyaga, two of the areas hit by the 2011 Tsunami.  Blocks of sound bubble in the first movement, in jerky ostinato with nice jazzy trumpet calls, high pitched winds and swathes of strings. Oddly cheerful! A long ominous wail marks the start of the second section, suggesting perhaps the flow of the waves rolling onto land. No-one will ever forget the footage caught on film or the frightening silence, broken only by crushing debris.  The timpani pound, brasses wail and the orchestra plays a long line of multiple fragments and layers.  Fearsome growls and the sound of a bell.   There certainly is scope for a piece in which music could translate the idea of multiple fragments and layers of density, flowing and churning in different sequence, but Turnage can't develop the concept in the space of a few minutes.

The third section "Running" represents a poem "Mother Burning" by Sou Sakon which describes the poet running from flames. But the mother, following behind, is engulfed.  Rapid fragments of words and sound, the two soloists singing lines that intersect rather than connect.  Turnage's thing for percussion and screaming brass is used to good effect, the vocal lines more choppily employed: but that's what happens when you're running for your life and can't take long breaths.  The childrens choirs sing an adaptation of a Japanese children's song similar to "Twinkle, twinkle Little Star" The English accents of the young singers, singing in Japanese, add a surreal touch, more poignant than if they were singing in a language they'd normally speak.  The melody is taken up by the mezzo, Mihoku Fujimura, a much welcome regular visitor to the UK.

Suntory Dance , the central movement, makes a striking diversion from the threnodies before and after.  It's also the best section, so good that it could act as a stand-alone concert piece.  Here, Turnage's facility for strong brass and percussion comes to the fore: quirky, wayward rhythms, angular blocks and more busy, bubbling figures from which the idea of "dance" might come.  I don't know why "Suntory", which is the name of the concert hall and of the company that financed it.  They manufacture alcoholic drinks, and one of their big brands is named Hibiki, "Japanese Harmony". The piece is so lively that it could be an  anthem for the company, used in encores and social occasions. So much for the BBC translation that Hibiki just means  "beautiful sound".

After this interlude, darkness returns. Brooding timpani and moaning brass, string lines shining with metallic edge. Lovely woodwind passages: Fujimura sings lines from texts from Monzaemon Chikamatsu’s The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, a  Bunraku drama from 1703. It's such a classic that it's been adapted for cinema, its tale of doomed love a recurrent meme, though what connection this has to Hiroshima or to the Tsunami, I don't know.  Much has been made in the publicity material for Turnage's Hibiki about the Mahler connection, but frankly I cannot hear any resemblance to Das Lied von der Erde,.  But the real subject of Das Lied von der Erde is Mahler himself, and his metaphysics  The orientalism in that piece reflects the original poems Mahler used and adapted for his own purposes. And in any case, they weren't Japanese but Chinese.  No doubt much will be made of this in the media by those who don't really know Das Lied von der Erde.  Double-dose cultural appropriation.

The final section, for orchestra and children's voices, is swirling abstraction, the word "Fukushima" repeated, almost mechanically.  Turnage's Hibiki is good listening but it  doesn't really hold together. The parts are greater than the sum, aside from the vivacious Suntory Dance.   That's excellent, and parts 1, 2 and 4 work well together musically, but parts 3, 4 and6 are weak : No fault of the performers, though.  It's not nearly near the level of Turnage's Remembering : in memoriam Evan Scofield, a work of heartfelt sincerity. (Read more about that HERE)

Ikuma Dan Hiroshima Symphony - the finest Hiroshima music of all

Ikura Dan's Symphony no 6 "Hiroshima" (1985). The photo above isn't Hiroshima, or Nagasaki, but a still from the movie The Last War (世界大戦争) (Toho, 1961) about an apocalypse in a Cold War future.  Frighteningly prescient now when trolls play power games with nuclear weapons for toys.  Ikura Dan (1924-2001) was an aristocrat from a wealthy samurai family.   His forebears were part of the Zaibatsu, who created the modern Japanese economy and banking system. His grandfather was Baron Takuma Dan, boss of the Mitsui Corporation, and Prime Minister of Japan.  Born into privilege, Ikuma Dan had all the advantages that his position offered him. He had a good education, both in Japanese and international culture. Yet he lived in times of unprecedented social change. When he was six, his grandfather was assassinated by right-wing extremists.  He lived through the wars against China, though he was not a combatant.  Like many Japanese intellectuals he had an affinity for Chinese culture. He died in Suzhou.

The western media thinks almost exclusively in English-language terms, blanking out the experience of other cultures and peoples.  It's not easy to learn about non-western cultures, but try we must, for the distorted imbalance of western media blinds us, trapping us in ignorance, bigotry and war.  Ikuma Dan is a good point from which to start. Many composers -- west as well as east -- wrote music for film, in order to make a living.  In any case, in Japan, cinema was an art form almost from the beginning, creating masterpieces of poetic power.   Even Godzilla is more than schlock! (read my Godzilla and the Tsunami HERE).  Being independently wealthy, Dan didn't write much for fiml, concentrating on orchestral music -- even symphonies -- opera, ballet and chamber music.

Shrill whirring marks the start of Dan's Hiroshima Symphony. Suddenly a blast, then silence and the eerie cry of a lone woodwind instrument. Swirling, turbulent figures ascend upwards. Tense, angular figures. Fierce ostinato, interspersed with themes where staccato notes  fly in flurries.  Long, sweeping lines in the strings, reaching out as if searching, yet also smothering the other layers in the music. Yet other textures emerge. The searching lines clear to reveal the high-pitched solo woodwind, calling into space. It's intriguing. A nohkan is a flute with a high tessitura that can range over two octaves and carry across a large performing space.   Dominant chords for strings, brass and winds in more or less unison return, but the lone woodwind struggles against them. Trumpets scream strident lines, marked by the thud of timpani. The strings soar ever upwards gradually breaking from the relentless ostinato.  A harp sounds, introducing a new motif, also soaring but more subtle.  Delicate hints of lyrical melody peak out from the gloom, and the woodwind reappears, now more confident, singing its strange melody. It's much more interesting than the orchestral lines with their very western timbre, which dominates for many measures.  Significantly, the nohkan was invented in the fifteenth century, long before the modern concert orchestra.   The nohkan will not be beaten. It screams, holding legato at a very high pitch, Very dramatic and highly original.  Not concertante in the least but a battle of wits between large forces and a wayward, elusive solo instrument  played with such intensity that it holds the orchestra at bay.  A descent into ominous semi-silence.

Zingy zig-zag figures fly fiercely as the second movement, an Allegro ritmico, begins. The pace is fleet, dizzying lines giving way to oddly dance-like snippets, broken by violent staccato. Pastiche "Japonisme" stepping rhythms and crashing cymbals alternate with trumpets and heavier plodding figures, possibly meant to sound borderline vulgar.  Tempi grow faster, almost to whirlwind. Suddenly, the  nohkan breaks through, the music now properly Japanese.   Imagine  a bird singing in a wilderness, or a stream trickling in the forest around a temple.  Frenzied figures return, hurtling on in new directions.  The orchestra  swells up again, highlighted with drums, trumpets, bells and crashing percussion. Something is changing, somehow.

The Andante, marked sostenuto e funebre, is an elegy. and particularly sophisticated. From a steady opening,  the woodwind returns, but now is joined by another even more "Japanese" woodwind, a hollow-toned instrument called a shinobue, used in ttraditional folk and ritual music.  At first this sings fitfully, in broken phrases, overwhelmed by the swirling forces in the orchestra.  Soon, though, it gathers force, as if inspired by the more dominant woodwind. Together they dialogue, pushing back the "shadows" in the orchestra. The hollow-voiced woodwind now sings more than brief snatches. Its melody is like an ancient Japanese folk tune, fragile, yet strong enough to assert itself against the orchestra around it.   It seems timeless.  Now the "voice" becomes human. A soprano replicates the lines of the woodwinds.  She sings long, searching lines like the lines of the strings earlier in the symphony.  the writing for brass is interesting, too - smokey and mysterious, no longer strident.  It's as if all the elements that had gone before were being combined and renewed . A crescendo builds up, and the orchestra swells up, singing   I don't know what this means, but the effect is inspiring. Hence the photo here of doves being released before the bombed building that is the memorial at Hiroshima.  Fluttering wings symbolize the triumph of hope over hate.  Perhaps, a new, more positive dawn is emerging, and it's beautiful.

Frankly, I don't know why Penderecki's Threnody gets so much publicity.  It's fame lies in its title, but that  title is bogus and exploitative.  It wasn't written "for the victims of Hiroshima", but was dreamed up for a premiere   As music, it's also not nearly as well written as Ohki and Dan's Hiroshima symphonies, which are sincere.  (Read more sbout Ohki HERE and HERE.)  Ikuma Dan';s Hiroshima is the real thing,  written by a composer who knew from personal experience what Hiroshima meant and how it connects to Japanese history and to world humanity. So let's give Ikuma Dan the honour he deserves.

If you like this, please read about Toru Takemitsu's Requiem HERE  and about Japanese art movies about war, like The Burmese Harp  HERE and  Kobayashi's three part saga The Human Condition HERE

10,000 voices Ode to Joy

Ten thousand voices in unison, singing Beethoven Ode to Joy.  A clip from the legendary concert in Sendai, Japan, on December 17th  2010, celebrating Beethoven's birthday. Genius logistics - imagine getting that many people together and running things smoothly. More importantly, though, this illustrated the meaning of the piece, the coming together of disparate people, united in harmony.  Not something to be denigrated.  Notice, no room for much in the way of audience, though - the choirs take up the whole football stadium. But the purpose of this mega-celebration was participation itself, a once in a lifetime experience of symbolic value. (full clip below)

And to prove the value of such an event look at the nasty comment below "What do they know about German culture and Music, Beethoven is from Bonn as am I, this music belongs to german people, u get yours"  Ignorance and hate always march together. Beethoven would have cringed. 



 Major l;ogistics, too, technically, aided by technology. The fashion for "Extreme singing" was huge in 19th century Europe, where 10,000-voice events weren't unknown. Since performances took place then in the open air without microphones and TV screens, the results would almost certainly have been less cohesive than this one, which I find quite moving. (Good bass, and a soprano who projects personality.)  Maybe 19th century audiences liked mass events for the sake of mass itself,   "Never mind the quality, feel the width". Being in the open air would have dissipated the music but helped the social side of things.

 

Martyrs of Nagasaki

Seventy years ago today, on August 9th 1945, an atom bomb fell on Nagasaki.Why Nagasaki ? The most westernized city in Japan, the centre of Christianity and of foreign trade, which for centuries had been Japan's window on the world?  Perhaps the man in the photo, staring at the ruins of the Catholic Cathedral, might have pondered the irony. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't combatants, but they've fought a greater battle by reminding the world that nuclear war is not a good thing. Nuclear weapons may have proliferated, but - thank God - no nation has been crazy enough to use them.

Thus we should think of the selflessness of the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki, crucified , like Jesus Christ himself,  in February 1597. Christianity had reached Japan barely 50 years before, when Francis Xavier "Apostle to the Indies" arrived at Kagoshima in 1549. Within a very short time, the Jesuits had made hundreds of thousands of converts, helped in no small part by long-standing  inter-daimyo rivalries.  But the very growth of Christianity posed a threat to stability, so it was suppressed. Thousands escaped to Macau. Japanese craftsmen built Macau's Church of St Paul's (read more here). Quite probably Japanese DNA features in the Macanese community since officially the Chinese government didn't allow Chinese people to remain in Macau overnight.  After the Japanese invasion of China, millions of refugees poured into Macau, a tiny enclave with hardly any resources. The Bishop said God would provide, no-one should be turned away.  Some of the 16th century cannons in the Monte Fort were supposedly sold. Weapons turned, not to plough shares, but to rice.

The Martyrs of Nagasaki were killed to send a political message. Huge crowds were forced to watch their sufferings. Yet they weren't silenced. From their crosses, they sang psalms. Three of the martyrs were Japanese. One was Paul Miki, scion of a samurai family, fearless in the face of death. He's quoted as calling out to the crowd "“I am a Japanese and a brother of the Society of Jesus. I have committed no crime. The only reason I am condemned to die is that I have taught the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am happy to die for that and accept death as a great gift from my Lord.”  He asked the crowd if they saw fear on the faces of his companions. He said they didn't fear because they believed in a higher level of existence.

True Christians, like Buddhists, and indeed any people with a moral base, don't hate. They break the vicious cycle. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by campaigning against nuclear weapons, serve a higher cause.  On 29th October 1943, in Hong Kong, 32 men and one extraordinarily brave woman were beheaded. Reverend Wong Shui Poon was among them. He was 65, a Cambridge graduate and head of the Chinese Christian community. He prayed with all the prisoners, Anglican or not, and stood by them as they were executed. He was the last to die, by which time the swords were blunt. The first cuts didn't sever his head, and he continued to pray.
 

Hiroshima 70 years on, in art and music

Seventy years ago today, Hiroshima was destroyed. Never must we ever forget. Today, we are in danger of taking  Hiroshima for granted but in 1950,  Japan was still under military occupation and Japanese people weren't allowed official news of the bombing. News leaked out as small horrible hints : people who knew people who knew first hand. And the Japanese were still reeling from the shock of defeat, total carpet bombing, firestorms in cities of wooden houses. Hard news was hard to come by, but information spread by word of mouth, and by art. Novels were written, films were made, music was written. 

Above, Ghosts,  the first of the  fifteen "Hiroshima Panels " Genbaku no zu, made over the course of 32 years by Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi. Read more about them HERE. .The artists wrote "It was a procession of ghosts . In an instant, all clothing burned off of hands, faces. breasts swelled. The purple blisters on the victims soon burst and peeled off, hanging down like pieces of rags. With hands lifted half up, the victims appeared as ghosts in procession, dragging their ragged skin behind them  exhausted , rthey fell down moaning in heaps and died, one after another". Click on photo to enlarge.

In 1953, Masao Ohki (1901-1971) composed his fifth symphony, the Hiroshima Symphony, based on the first six of the panels, which were completed between 1950 and 1952. The symphony is a  carefully constructed meditation on the images, which reflects the idea of self contained panels, as if "boxes within boxes" can make sense of the chaos, the totality too hard to absorb at once. .The Prelude starts with unsettling calm, tense cello and bass pizzicatos gradually adding a sense of time ticking away urgently. Ohki is too subtle to "depict" the actual impact. Instead, the second part is a meditation in the lowest registers of winds and strings, a solo trumpet adding a sort of cry of anguished disbelief. He titles it Ghosts – it was a procession of ghosts, referring to the Maruki panel above. 

The third section of the symphony refers to the second Maruki panel, Fire, (pictured above) of which the Marukis wrote "In an instant, everything burst into flames. Even the ruins were ablaze. The dead silence of a vast desert broke. Some fell senseless under fallen debris, others  desperately tried digging out.  Everything was consumed by a crimson light. People fell and were taken by the fire".  Ohki expresses this with rapid chromatic runs and trills, tremolos and glissandi. This is the imagery of wind, and transformation for in those moments, the world  was changed forever. Another darkly meditative section Water,  develops the themes in Ghosts, before the strange and disturbing fifth section, Rainbow. Ohki quotes the description "All of a sudden black rain poured over them and then appeared a beautiful rainbow". A plaintive solo violin, then a solo clarinet evoke the unworldly half light. Ohki isn’t depicting an ordinary rainbow as such, but perhaps a surreal, inchoate response to the idea of beauty in the midst of horror. The sixth section, Boys and Girls is even more poignant.

The seventh section is Atomic desert: boundless desert with skulls. Against a background of "flat-lining" strings, keening and wailing, the disembodied sounds of flute, piccolo and clarinet rise tentatively. It’s a bizarrely abstract piece, strikingly modern, particularly when considering how Ohki had been cut off from western mainstream music for a good fifteen years since the Japanese regime, allied to the Nazis, suppressed "modern" music. The final movement, Elegy, draws in themes from the earlier sections, yet also develops them with deeper emphasis. As Morihide Katayama writes in the booklet of the CD (Takuo Yuasa, New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra): "the conflict is unresolved, and whether the terror is broken down or not depends on subsequent human conscience".

Below an excellent blend of music and illustrations:  

Hiroshima - never forget. Follow the label "Hiroshima" to see all the other pieces I've written about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, related films, history and music about war.Later I'll write about Ikura Dan.

Chameleon woman Li Xianglan

Yoshiko Ōtaka 大鷹 淑子) died this week, aged 94, of a heart attack. Who was she, and why does it matter? Otaka was a glamour actress who starred in the film Shina no Yoru (China Nights) (1940), using her Chinese name  and identity, Li Xianglan. Nearly everyone knows the song from that film, albeit in its racist, bowdlerized version. Just as Otaka masde propaganda films for the Japanese invasion of China, she made propaganda films for the American occupation of Japan, under the name Shirley Yamaguchi.  A "Chameleon woman", because that's the way to survive in difficult times.

China Nights is so notorious in China, that its very mention still gives some people bad memories. I approached it with trepidation. Once you get over the propaganda aspects, though, it's not such a bad movie. You can see why it convinced many Japanese at the time that they were doing good for the Chinese by invading their country,, bombing and killing. Please read my analysis of the film here. "China Nights - totally politically incorect". 

In the film, Li plays a Chinese partisan who learns to realize that the Japanese are nice people who just want to civilize the Chinese. Needless to say, this didn't go down well with the Chinese. As a symbol of Japanese oppression, she was vilified. Just as she was about to be sentenced to death, it was revealed that she wasn't Chinese at all, but a Japanese who had been adopted by Chinese. So it wasn't treason by patrotism for the wrong side.  Sher moved to Japan wherte she made more movies and becamer a member of the Japanese parliament. Her life is thus a snapshot of turbulent times. A chameleon lady, who switched names, nationalities and professions (she wasn't all that good a singer either). She was a woman who survived because she had to be what the peiople around her expected her to be. Not really so different from millions of other women after all.  What is a stereotype, after all? Below, another of her famous songs, sung in Chinese, 

 

Totally Politically Incorrect 支那の夜

With trepidation, I watched China Nights, Shina no Yoru, the notorious film made during the Japanese occupation of China. For Chinese people, the film has negative connotations because it connects to a brutal period in the Chinese past. For a hundred years, the nation suffered humiliation and then was invaded yet again. Although this was a propganda movie, thousands of people watched it, and the song on which the film is based is ubiquitous. Why, I thought, did people watch it then, when the very mention of it now raises old wounds?

One steamy night in Shanghai, there's a fight. A handsome Japanese (Kazuo Hasegawa) rescues a Chinese woman (Li Xianglan). She says she has nowhere to go so he takes her back to his rooms in a building where many Japanese live. .He makes her take a bath. This is more provocative than it might seem to westerners because the Japanese were fastidious about cleanliness and regarded the Chinese as less so.  The implication is that the Japanese are in China to civilize the Chinese. But he's such a gentleman that he's chaste and respectful.

It's interesting to see how the other Japanese react. The house is "westernized" with typical thirties comforts. Nothing big deal in itself, as many Chinese lived like that too. The Japanese take their meals together on western tables and discuss the "scandal".  But the women are welcoming, even the one who is in love with Hasegawa. Even more significant are the scenes depicting the streets of Shanghai during the 1920's, when the film is set (though it was made in 1940). We see images of western soldiers marching on Chinese streets, western jazz and broadcasts, nightclubs for the rich while the locals struggle in poverty. This is not a film about gender politics as some have suggested. It's plain old-fashioned politics. Shanghai was occupied, too, not just by the Japanese but by western colonial powers who had themselves invaded China to force the country to trade with them. Let's never forget that China was "opened" so British merchants could sell opium. War is not, as has been said, the continuation of politics but the continuation of dirty business interests.
So Hasegawa and Li go shopping in a city where western troops march in the streets and the locals struggle in poverty. Propaganda, perhaps, but the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was a genuine belief in "Asia for Asians", though it was still colonialism, with the Japanese in control instead of Europeans. It's important to remember the relationship between Japan and China : Japan modernized with amazing speed and success. Chinese liberals, including Dr Sun Yat Sen, went to Japan to learn. It's not at all as simple as Chinese hating the Japanese the way westerners demonized the Japanese.  In this film, Miss Li is a metaphor for China, because she's an orphan whose home was destroyed in some unknown battle. She revisits the site of her former mansion, and picks a spray of plum blossom in the ruins. She weeps for her parents, and  Hasegawa comes and comforts her. When she was sick with fever, he nursed her back to health. They fall in love and holiday, blissfully, in the West Lakes.Wonderful shots of Old China, bridges, old boats.

 Miss Li is, however, a partisan whose mission is to infiltrate Japanese circles and collect information.  Hasegawa confronts the Chinese underground and thinks he's saved Miss Li. They marry. She wears a modern wedding dress, but suddenly, he's called back to work. He's some kind of merchant navy security rather than military, which skirts the issue everyone watching the film would have known only too well. The cargo boat he's escorting gets attacked by partisans. Hasegawa goes missing: everyone thinks he's dead. Miss Li goes back to the scenic spot where they'd been so happy and tries to kill herself. But Hasegawa appears and the lovers are reunited.

There are further sub-texts to the film. It's not nearly as simple as it seems. The actress, Li Xianglan, was considered a traitor. It turned out that she was in fact Japanese, though born and raised in China. After the war she returned to Japan and to her Japanese name Yoshiko Yamaguchi. She made more movies and ran as a member of Parliament.  The film, directed by Osamu Fushimizu, was only one of many made for the Japanese market, which was fascinated by anything Chinese. Their military might be in the process of ripping China apart, but like western colonial powers, they thought it was in China's best interests. As so often, those who "love" a place, don't "love" its people other than as tourist fantasy.

Indeed, the film itself "colonizes" and appropriates for itself a song written much earlier by a composer who wrote "serious" western classical music as well as popular music and music for film. The song was first recorded by Hamako Watanabe, 渡辺はま子(1910-1999) (pictured left) who was a real classical music singer, unlike Li Xianglan who was an actress who could carry a tune. Watanabe also sang it in another Japanese movie, which I've seen but which isn't now available. She sang it in a concert setting, with great dignity. Watanabe, who had iconic status, cannot have been too impressed by Li's warbling.  But the real shame was to come later, when the song was further exploited by American GIs who dreamed up offensive, bowdlerized new lyrics that demean women, orientals and anyone else for that matter. "Colonialization" all over again.These things need to be dealt with. They aren't issues of  the past but still happening in different forms all round us.

Please see my post on "Gloomy Sunday" another popular song that bears little resemblance to the original. Also, see my numerous posts on cultural stereotypes, Japan and China, Japanese and Chinese music and film.

Music from Japan Barbican Takemitsu

The latest Total Immersion weekend at the Barbican Centre features Music from Japan. Or more specifically, the music of Toruy Takemitsu, Toshio Hosakawa, Jo Kondo, Dai Fujikura and other contemporary composers. This isn't "Japanese" music in a generic sense, but music created by composers who write modern music, enriched by influences from a tradition that's even older than the western.

In the film being shown on Saturday, Takemitsu is shown sitting in a garden, explaining how gardens are a metaphor for music. A garden is like an orchestra, he says, consisting of lots of different elements which a musician can arrange in whatever order seems best. You can increase the impact of some elements by massing them, or extend their colours by planting with others that complement the palette. Sometimes some elements capture the eye, such as autumn leaves, while others remain a backbone, like pines. Textures vary: sometimes the delicacy of spring blossom, sometimes the tough character of tree bark. Then, too, there are extras, maybe the sound of water trickling from a bamboo pipe, or the chirping of crickets, or wind blowing through leaves. Or even the pattern of shade thrown by a cloud in the sky. A gardener works with nature, not against it. Thus a composer works with an orchestra, extending it and encouraging it to grow, but finding his ideas organically and in balance.

Takemitsu's music exemplifies an aesthetic which combines music, philosophy and a general regard for high artistic standards in all aspects of life.

 
What's more, these composers, though modern, reach huge audiences even though their work is "new". Everyone who's seen films by Kurosawa, Mizugoshi and others has heard Takemitsu, Ifukube or Riuchi Sakamoto, so new music is absorbed naturally into audience consciousness. Indeed, movies are built around music, like Shohei Imamura's Black Rain  which is a tribute to Takemitsu's Requiem for Strings. (more about that piece and the film here)   In the west, people make a fuss about the image of classical music as "elitist". They should look to Asia, if they want insights into the future of classical music.

HERE's a link to the Barbican day. Before that, on Friday 1st there's an all-day conference co-hosted by the Institute of Musical Research and the GSMD. It includes a performance of Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch II with pianist Noriko Ogawa. Here's a lovely clip :

ENO Madam Butterfly - preview, analysis

It's almost exactly seven years since the Anthony Minghella production of Puccini Madam Butterfly premiered at the Coliseum, London for the ENO. Minghella himself has passed on, but this time round the principals are the same. Mary Plazas sings Cio Cio San, Gwyn Hughes Jones sings Pinkerton and thge Puppets of the Blind Summit Theatre will be doing their thing. I caught the production first time round, the first night of the first run.

Madam Butterfly is perhaps even more relevant in our Global Village where cultures and races mix more fluidly than ever before. Minghella’s vision pits Puccini's gloriously Italianate score with the stylization of Japanese theatre. A woman dances with the black clothed figures of the men who manipulate Bunraku puppets. Gradually they tear her obi and it unravels like a river of blood. It’s a great image: woman as puppet, controlled by men. Its violence also hints at the tragedy to come. Bunraku may have a history of love suicide dramas but that’s lost on the average western audience. Fundamentally, Madam Butterfly isn't about Japan at all.

So the "neon Shanghai Tang" colours (as I called them then) of the production are there to entertain. They impart an exotic glow, so the real meaning of the plot is disguised.  Beneath the sentimental cherry blossoms and images of women as dolls, Madam Butterfly is a shockingly brutal story. Pinkerton's a sex tourist, exploiting the power he has to screw a little girl (in every sense of the word). Absolutely to Puccini's credit that he saw through the colonialist values of his time. He had no illusions about the superiority of western culture or Christianity.  Pinkerton is a weak man, supported by gunboats and consuls.  Indeed, it's an anomaly that Madam Butterfly was set in Japan at all, since Japan and Thailand were the only countries in Asia to remain independent and not become colonies. All over Asia and Africa, local populations became second-class citizens in their own countries. As Puccini implies, imperialism does not equate with civilization.

Until westerners stop seeing Madam Butterfly as a portrait of Japan, they're not going to deal with the real issues, which are only too relevant today. While it's no longer acceptable to sneer at blacks, Jews, women or gays, Asians (yellow, brown or olive) are fair game. Unconscious racism exists, and sadly among people who should know better. Perhaps it's ignorance, or fear, but it won't be eliminated until people stop making assumptions, and allow that just maybe, Asians know what they're doing, and western mores don't always apply.

Nagasaki, where Madam Butterfly is set, was an "international" port from the 16th century, where western influences reached Japan and from which Japanese esxports reached Europe. It's interesting that Puccini shows that Cio Cio San isn't merely a passive plaything. Long before Pinkerton arrives, she's already aware of the west and swallows the myth of western superiority since she thinks that through Pinkerton she'll get a new life. When she realizes her dreams were delusion, she kills herself. Anyone who has seen Japanese horror movies Takashi Miike’s Audition or Hideo Nakata’s Ring will be familiar with the idea of traumatized young women who are quite capable of hiding ferocity under a demure mask. Cio Cio San fights back, though she ends up hurting herself. You could read 20th century Asian history as a response to colonialism. Certiainly, Japanese modernization inspired other countries in Asia, many Asian leaders studying the Japanese model. Ironically, the Japanese succeeded in ridding Asia of colonialism, though not quite in the way they intended. (the photo show Tamaki Miura, a Jaoanese singer in a Japanese production of Madam Butterfly in 1922)

What troubles me about this production is the portrayal of the child Sorrow. He's shown as a puppet with a skull for a head. These days child protection laws work against having real children in  roles like this, late at night. Hence puppet. But is Minghella telling us that the child is just another puppet in a wider game? In the opera, his role is to be the innocent, loving being who inspires love from everyone, even in Mrs Pinkerton. So why should he be portrayed as an ugly miscreant? Are mixed race people somehow not human? (click on photo to enlarge).

Conversely, Minghella confirms how important this non-speaking part is to the whole story. What is to happen to this boy, taken from his environment and raised in a monocultural society where he'll always be an outsider? Given US racism towards Asians well into our generation, there would not have been a happy ending. All over Asia and Africa, there were huge mixed race communities, bridging cultures. Thousands of real life Madam Butterflys and certainly not all products of prostitution. Ironically, Japan was one of the few places where there weren't big mixed race communities. Nowadays there are lots of first generation mixed marriages, and also lots of Asians growing up in non-Asian environments. It may be fashionable to think that heritage doesn't matter, but I'm not so sure. So enjoy Madam Butterfly at the ENO and think about the wider context.
LOTS on this site about Nagasaki, Japanese and Chinese culture, Chinese stereotypes, modern Asia, cross culture, Puccini and Madam Butterfly. Please use search labels.

Godzilla, remembering the tsunami

It's been a year since the tsunami hit Northern Japan, followed by the emergency at Fukushima. The western news media have moved on, but for many of the Japanese involved, the trauma hasn't ended. Earlier this month, BBC2  TV ran a programme "Children of the Tsunami" (clip here). Kids are more matter of fact than adults, because they're so direct. These kids were positive and upbeat but I suspect they'd be a lot more screwed up if they didn't have good families and a supportive culture which predicates on everyone chipping in together.  One boy was so young he couldn't relate to things and became mute. It's a gradual process and full healing won't come soon. When one of the boys was asked what he'd do to reverse the disaster, he innocently said, "pick it all up and put it back in the sea where it came from". Perfectly logical if you're a kid. And presumably one who's grown up with Japanese ideas of the balance of nature.

Last year I wrote about Ishiro Honda's 1954 film Godzilla (Gojira in Japanese). Godzilla rises from the ocean and wreaks havoc on land. Everyone thinks the world is going to end. Then the scientist hears schoolchildren singing "The Prayer for Peace" and knows what he has to do. The music for the film was composed by Akira Ikufube 伊福部 昭 (1914-2006), himself a victim of radiation, but who lived to a ripe old age. Ikufube's score is evocative when you listen as music, without the film. Godziilla's main theme is poignant and beautiful, though he's a monster. When he stomps on land, and tears up electricity  pylons, the ostinato theme sounds like The Rite of Spring, only more bereft and anguished. Then, when the children sing the Prayer for Peace in a plaintive minor key, you realize it's an adaptation of the main Godzilla theme. Godzilla is much more than a monster movie, it's a parable about the power of nature, an art movie in every sense. DETAILS HERE.  Ikufube's full score is now available minus film so you can enjoy it on both levels. Also a lot of his symphonic music and non-film work. Please see lots more on Japanese film, Japanese composers and music for film on this site.

Hiroshima Nagasaki and the Burmese Harp

Sixty six years ago today, a bomb fell on Hiroshima, and another soon after on Nagasaki. The world changed then, whether some realize it or not. Even now, there are many who don't comprehend what this mass destruction meant, and what we might learn from it. Tsutomo Yamaguchi, who survived both bombs, dedicated his life to helping people understand. "I believe in love, in human beings,” he said. “The reason that I hate the atomic bomb is because of what it does to the dignity of human beings....... When you forget the dignity of individual human beings, that it is when you are heading towards the destruction of the Earth.” (For more please read HERE)

Yamaguchi would have understood The Burmese Harp (ビルマの竪琴 Biruma no tategoto) only too well. This film isn't about war so much as the way simple humanity can overcome horrific trauma. So perhaps it's something we should meditate upon.

A Japanese unit is in Burma. One young soldier, Private Mizushima (Shoji Yasui), has built himself a Burmese harp. He plays it so beautifully that his fellow soldiers are lifted out of their situation. Captain Inōye (Rentaro Mikuni) is young, but the kind of leader who cares deeply for his men. He's also a musician, who keeps up their morale by getting them to sing. The men hear of Hiroshima and the end of the war. Inōye sends Mizushima to tell a unit holed up in a mountain to surrender. The news is so shocking to them that they can't  take it in, but before they can reconsider, they're massacred. Mizushima survives, covered by bodies. His wounds are treated by a Buddhist monk and he dons a monk's robes.

Everywhere he sees the bodies of the dead. Mizushima starts to bury them, but there are too many. He's haunted. He realizes he can't go back to normal life. Meanwhile, the war has ended and the unit is in a POW camp. The soldiers are desperate to know if Mizushima is OK. Captain Inōye has trained a parrot to say "Mizushima, come back to Japan" because the men think Mizushima has deserted.

In his wanderings as a monk, in the Burmese villages, Mizushima  taught a Burmese village boy to play the harp. When the soldiers hear the boy play, they know Mizushima has survived. One day, they're crossing a bridge and pass a monk who turns away. Inōye realizes too late it's Mizushima. A Burmese monk delivers a box with the ashes of the dead.  Who sent it ? Eventually it's time for repatriation. The men release the talking parrot. They sense Mizushima is around. He's hiding inside a giant Burmese Buddha. On board the ship home, Captain Inōye reads the men a letter Mizushima has sent. He's decided to be a monk and wander, penniless, over rivers and mountains, in expiation of something he can't express. Being a monk helps, but sometimes the heartbreak is so great he has to break his vows and play his harp to cope.

"Why must this world have such misery ?" he writes,  "Why must there be such inexplicable pain? ....the answers are not for us humans to know. Our work is simply to have the courage to face suffering and irrationality without fear, to have the strength to create peace by one's own example. "

Simple is often the hardest thing to do. This film (directed by Kon Ichikawa, 1956) means a lot to me. Once in the archives I found a transcript of a testimony by Colonel Doi. He had served in China since 1937 and fought in Malaya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Guadalcanal and Okinawa. Could a man survive all that unscathed, even if he was an officer, not frontline fodder? After the war he became a monk in Japan, praying for the souls of thousands who didn't survive, and for those his actions had killed.  When my father went to Japan he saw a disabled veteran begging outside a temple and instinctively bowed. Why, when his brother and friends were killed in a war crime , possibly connected to Col. Doi's men, though not at his command ?"I don't know" said my Dad, "but the soldier suffered too".

For my piece on Ikuma Dan's Symphony no 6 "Hiroshima" please read HERE. 

Please explore this site, lots of posts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chinese and Japanese culture, films, music and history the Holocaust, anti-war, non-violence and Aung San Suu Kyi. (use labels and search box). Here is a link to Kuroi Ame (Black rain) the film about Hiroshima with music based on Toru Takemitsu and here is a link to Kobayashi's The Human Condition.

Madame Butterfly broadcast and real Japanese response

That excellent Puccini Madama Butterfly from the Royal Opera House is now available online, internationally and on demand on BBC Radio 3.  It's a must-listen because Kristine Opolais is singing - she's the sensation of the production! Liping Zhang will be on the film that's being made, so this is your chance to hear why most of us were stunned by Opolais. Read review HERE. (There's an announcement before the show that Opolais is unwell, so not in best form.) You'll need to go to about 20 minutes to cut the chat, most of it uninformative (though Andris Nelsons talks well about the music at 15 min)

When are western commentators going to realize that the Japan Puccini portrays is not the real  Japan? Madama Butterfly tells us no more about Japanese society than The Mikado. Puccini uses the exotic setting to emphasize the idea that westerners like Pinkerton know kaput about other civilizations. Puccini writes about what happens when one culture sees others only in its own context. Unfortunately too many westerners still think Madam Butterfly "must" fit their conception of what Japan ought to be.

The lady in the photo is Hamako Watanabe 渡辺はま子(1910-1999) There's an article about her in Japanese Wiki, but little in English. She was one of the big singing stars in Japan in the 1930's, 40's and 50's. HERE is a clip of her singing in 1939. A real Japanese song on the theme of Nagasaki and Madama Butterfly. Please listen as it's a genuine Japanese response to the opera.  Translation, help please ! Listen to the snippets from Puccini.  Nagasaki means different to Japanese than it does to most westerners. It was where the Potuguese in the 16th century, and later the Dutch, traded with Japan, so placing the opera in this city means a lot more than to those who know Asia. The idea that there was any single "Butterfly" original is sheer nonsense. There must have been hundreds of contacts, even though foreign communities in Nagasaki were closely monitored.

HERE is a link to a Japanese TV documentary about Ms. Watanabe, and shows her singing Shina no Yori (China Nights) in her 80's. Shina no yori is a story worth telling in more detail, so I'll write more another time.

Intelligent Puccini Madama Butterfly - Royal Opera House

When the current production of Puccini's Madama Butterfly premiered in 2003, I remember being startled at how stark the production seemed, with its clean horizontal lines and open spaces. Very different indeed from the over-stuffed, over-fussy clutter of fin de siècle clichés about Japan. Western Japonisme as decorative wrapping has little to do with reality. Madama Butterfly is a powerful opera because it deals with real human dilemmas, by no means unique to Japan or to the early 20th century.

Instead, this production, directed by Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, uses the Japanese context intelligently so it works with the drama. Japanese art is stylized, blank spaces part of the design, so key details stand out in sharp focus. The sets in this production, designed by Christian Fenouillat, are clean and open, so there's no irrelevant distraction. The backdrop of shoji screens allows quick scene changes, contrasting the interior with the vast panorama outside. It's a telling comment. As Goro points out, changing the walls changes perspective. This opera isn't really "about" Japanese society as much as about the way people don't perceive things in the same way.

As Caurier and Leiser said in a recent interview, Madama Butterfly is "not a beautiful story, it’s awful, it’s violent. Yes, you see the flowers but you must have the smell of blood running through them”. Throughout history, those with wealth and power have always been able to exploit those who don't. Pinkerton buys a package, house, servants, mock family and  girl to use as sexual covenience. He's infatuated temporarily by Butterfly's beauty but he's under no illusion that he's interested in her other than as an object to gratify his ego. Perhaps that's why he takes the child. He can't concieve that its mother or culture mean anything.

Butterfly is so desperate to escape her background that even before she meets Pinkerton, she's obsessed about becoming an instant American. She invests so much in her delusion that she can't cope with reality. She kills herself, not simply because harakiri "is" custom, but because she's invested so much into her fixation that she can't live with reality. "....nulla, nulla, fuor che la morte".


Although this is the third revival of this production since 2003, the performace felt fresh because it was directed, not by substitutes but by Leiser and Caurier themselves. Every performance has to be "new" because casts change and circumstances change. Patricia Racette, who has sung Cio Cio San many times before, pulled out at the last minute, but in some ways that was fortunate, because Kristine Opolais, making her Royal Opera House debut, throws herself so convincingly into the part that she makes it her own. She's young enough to convey Butterfly's innocence but has strength of personality, which comes through in her singing. She sings the love duet with such intensity that you wonder how a 15 year old could find such passion, especially for a stranger she's just met. This emphasizes Butterfly's single-minded determination. Reality doesn't get in the way of imagination.

Opolais's Butterfly is wonderfully varied. After the Bonze's curse, her voice takes on a tense edge, showing that Butterfly is deeply traumatized. Then she switches quickly back to sweetness when she turns to Pinkerton. Swift reactions, for Cio Cio San is always adapting, and living intensely in the moment. Opolais genuinely interacts with Dolore (Niklas Allan). She's not singing to an object, or a puppet, but as real mother to real child. Madama Butterflies stand and fall on Un bel di vedremo, and Opolais conveys complete emotional engagement. She's not merely describing a sequence of events, but how they feel to her. An interesting voice, with good range, and a natural acting singer. She's a regular at the Berlin Staatsoper, where she'll be singing Butterfly in March 2012.

James Valenti as Lt. Pinkerton is rather less successful, although he has had the role in his repertoire for years. Arguably, Pinkerton is emotionally more buttoned up than many men, but Puccini builds a lot more into the part than repression. Perhaps further into the run, Valenti's voice may blossom, and hopefully be preserved at its best in the film that's being released on BP Big Screen and cinemas on 4th July. Anthony Michaels-Moore sang Sharpless with warmth, for the Consul is a figure of reasonableness in this claustrophobic world of extremes.

From the vigour with which Robin Leggate sang Goro, it was hard to believe that he's retiring after the end of this production, his 909th performance at the Royal Opera House, since 1977. This Goro is directed so he moves swiftly, reflecting the character's quick wits and cunning. Leggate sings with unflagging energy, despite having to be fleet of foot.

Similarly, Helene Schneiderman's Suzuki was vibrant and expressive. There's a lot more to this role than mere servant. Suzuki can be cocky, although she's loyal. Cio Cio San isn't completely the mistress even at home. Schneiderman intones her prayer to the gods so forcefully that when she sings with Butterfly, you pick up on the undercurrent of tension even that exists in their relationship. Suzuki's gods will win, Cio Cio san hasn't a chance.

Buddhists don't normally curse people, and in Japan, Buddhism co-exists with Shinto quite happily. Buddhists have a lot in common with Christians too. This Bonze is a figment of Puccini's imagination, created to inject extreme panic, smashing forever Cio Cio San's links with her past. Perhaps that's why in this production, he appears all-white, like an apparition of a ghost from a Japanese horror story, not as a living monk. Jeremy White's Bonze bursts onto the scene, screaming violently, striking terror. Great theatre, as Puccini must have intended.

Zhengzhong Zhou sings Prince Yamadori and Daniel Grice sings the Imperial Commisioner. Both impressed, proving how the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme nurtures singers in good directions. Yamadori is an interesting role which could be developed more than it usually is. Why would a prince marry a second-hand geisha, and one who's been cursed for consorting with foreigners?  He rides a carriage up the steep hill, whereas everyone else in this opera walks. Why would a man of that status humiliate himself by divesting all his other wives? Zhou sings the part with tenderness, creating a sincere Yamadori who is emotionally honest and vulnerable though he has all the trappings of power. Pinkerton in reverse?

Over the years, I've grown to appreciate this production for its depth and sensitivity, and would heartily recommend it to anyone who really wants to understand the human - and political - story Puccini might be trying to tell us, beneath the surface gloss. FULL review with photos and cast details, etc in Opera Today

Madam Butterfly in real life.

Strictly speaking, Madam Butterfly isn't "about" Japan. Japan is an exotic context, building upon Europe's fascination with things oriental. This fascination with alternatives to mainstrean western culture had a huge impact on the development of western music and art. To Puccini's credit, he took the trouble to find out as much as he could about Japan even though there are things in the opera which aren't historically accurate. It tells little more about real Japanese society than Gilbert and Sullivan. The important thing is that Puccini is psycholgically accurate.

Moreover, Puccini picks up on the basic premise of imperialism that that some cultures are "superior" and have a right to exploit others. Lt. Pinkerton is the ultimate colonialist. For him, the east gives him the freedom to behave in a way he wouldn't dare at home. Ther locals don't matter, nor their culture. They exist for his own use, not as themselves. In the end he takes Butterfly's child, denying her her one comfort and identity as a mother, and foisting a perpetual reminder onto his new wife that she wasn't the mother of his first child. Sexist creep. Few, however, question the assumption that the child might be better off in America. But the fact is that the US was a racist society. Ask blacks and Native Americans. Orientals were seen as The Yellow Peril, almost as non-humans, and a threat to white values. In parts of Canada and the US, intermarriage was forbidden by law. Mixed race kids didn't fit in. So the idea that Pinkerton is somehow redeeming himself isn't true. He's an imperialist who thinks that non-white cultures are inherently inferior, so taking the kid is a further insult.  Any cross culture adoption is fraught with issues, but a man as insentive as Pinkerton will probably never learn. He's even more of blind bigot than the opera portrays.

Non-western cultures were a lot more enlightened than the Pinkertons of this world then and now realize. The Japanese, for example, absorbed change readily. Much of Japanese culture stemmed from China. In the 16th century, hundreds of thousands converted to Christianity. It wassn't just the introduction of Portuguese guns and cannon that interested them. Then the revolution of the Meiji, when Japan transformed from feudal to modern within a few years. The Japanese even adopted colonialism, assuming that if the west could demand concessions from China, so could they. They were nearer, after all, and needed the natural resoures. One of the ironies of the Second World War is that it took the Japanese invasion to end western control of China. Obviously core values don't change but Japanese culture's a lot more adaptive than many.

But not all colonials were Pinkertons. British India isn't typical because British society was exported wholesale. Prior to the arrival of Memsahibs and the High Raj, people mixed. Millions of Madam Butterfly situations that weren't necessarily exploitive, as the number of Anglo-Indians and Luso-Indians indicate. People are people ! From the shores of Africa to the shores of Japan, hundreds of mixed race communities, which developed their own identity and sub-culture. First-generation mixed race had something to turn to, even if it was never easy being different. (that's why anyone who mknows Asia will know there was never, ever an ur-Butterfly).

A while back, there was TV documentary in which a British actor traced his origins. He'd assumed his ancestress in what is now Ghana, was exploited, but it turned out that she was a prosperous businesswoman who'd had a family with a Dutchman. He didn't abandon her and left money in his will to his children. Millions more stories like that, all over Asia and Africa. As one Eurasian super achiever told me, "We have to try harder because we have to prove ourselves". Fundamentally, it's just not true that mixed race situations are prostitution arrangements doomed to failure. That's "colonial thinking" implcitly assuming the inferiority of "lesser breeds" (as they were actually called once) . Obviously there were horrible things, because that's the way the world is. But the idea that non-whites are vaguely inferior, persists. Even now mixed race communities are dismissed by those who think in simplistic black and white terms (sic). It's a throwback to colonial racism, even if it's completely unconscious. Mixed race sub cultures are  important because they show the way ahead in a world that's becoming increasingly mixed. Trouble is, they're not studied properly because they don't fit easy classification.

Click on photo to enlarge. Plenty more on this site about cross culture, yellowface, Japan, mixed culture and stereotypes.

Compassion Bypass? Met stars withdraw from Japan

"Fearing Radiation", Netrebko, Kaufmann and Calleja have withdrawn from the Met Opera's Japan tour just before it starts this week. (See story HERE) It's the Met's first tour to Japan since 2007, and the first visit by a big company since the March 11 earthquake, so it's very high profile indeed. In Japan, opera is taken extremely seriously so the Met's visit has huge symbolic implications. In situations like these, normal life must go on, so the country can rebuild. Boosting morale is a form of disaster relief. If ever there was a time to show solidarity with the Japanese people, this would be it.

Compassion bypass?  Of course everyone worries about radiation. But Tokyo is 240 km south west of Fukushima, and Nagoya is 270km even further south west than Tokyo. It's not like the Big Stars will be forced to live like millions in the north of Japan, where many still don't have proper housing or support. Statistically, millions in Japan are likely to suffer more than the Big Stars nominally exposed for a few days in swanky hotels. The rest of the Met crew who aren't so rich and famous don't have the option of playing chicken. In any case, ther Met wouldn't be sending nearly 400 people there if there was a serious risk. Imagine the lawsuits.

In Netrebko's defence, she's been cancelling all Spring, even before the earthquake, as has Levine. But the other two? Sure, they're scared. Everyone is. But it's not fair on Japanese opera audiences, on the Japanese people and on the rest of us all over the world who care about human suffering.

Edinburgh Festival 2011 "turning Japanese"

Will the Edinburgh Festival outshine the BBC Proms this year? Serious competition, even though lots of Edinburgh will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 so no-one need miss out.

Big international bands! Kent Nagano conducts the lively Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in two very interesting programmes. Jonathan Nott conducts the unique Bamberg Orchestra, and Charles Dutoit conducts the Philadeplhia Orchestra in two relatively straightforward programmes. Myung-whun Chung brings the Soeul Philharmonic for their Edinburgh debut. In Korea, they take western classical music extremely seriously, so expect world class standards. The Philharmonia London (Salonen), The BBC Scottish Orchestra (Runnicles, Volkov), The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Jurowski), the superlative Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Volkov, Ticciati, Norrington) lead the local contingent. In football this would be pretty close to Premier League (Premier League being Berlin, Lucerne and Vienna).

Then look at the repertoire! Big starter is Schumann Das Paradies und die Peri with Roger Norrington who brought the piece back into the repertoire. The first time I heard him conduct it (1998) he had to explain it to the sudience, it was so "new". It will be wonderful to hear what he does with it after all these years  Nagano's programmes are adventurous - Takemitsu and Unsuk Chin and Waltraud Meier no less, singing Mahler. Myung-whun Chung is conducting Messiaen, in which he's a force of nature.

Edinburgh are using the image of a green chrysanthemum (one of my favourite flowers) to emphasize that there'll be lots of non-western music in the 2011 Festival. Takemitsu, Hosokawa, Dai Fujikura, Unsuk Chin, all leading lights of modern music who happen to be Japanese or Korean. Even the Arditti Quartet is in on the act, though they've been playing these composers long before anyone else.  Chinese musicians too, like Yundi Li, much underrated because Lang Lang grabs the limelight, and Xuefei Yang, the guitarist, and the T'ang Quartet. Note they're all playing modern works, not traditional folk music. Modern East Asian music has a tradition completely of its own, which exists in parallel with a resurgence in traditional forms.

Asia is so huge that it really can't be spoken of as one unit, anymore than you might link the Lapps of Finland to the musicians of the Cape Verde Islands. But it's time we recognised the confluence of western and non-western music. Messaien, Debussy, Ravel, all influenced by non-western worlds. Hence the Jogyakarta Gamelan Orchestra. Gamelan captivated  audiences at the 1870 World's Fair in Paris. It's influence is huge - Debussy, Messiaen, Bartok, Colin McPhee, etc.  We wouldn't have nearly as much music for percussion without gamelan. Colonialism should be as dead in music as it is in politics (where unfortunately it still exists).

Impressive opera at Edinburgh this year too, and international, too. Jont productions are a good thing as they spread costs and make adventurous fare economically feasible., From Flanders comes the Vlaamse Opera with Rossini Semiramide,. René Jacobs conducts the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in Haydn's Orlando Paladino (look at the singers!). Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Massenet's Thaïs. Again western fascination with non western themes, going a long way back. The "Chinese" opera here is a modern hybrid, a reworking of Hamlet, The Prince of Zhi Dan. It's by the Shanghai Beijing Opera Troupe. Beijing and Shanghai opera are quite different so I think this must just be Beijing opera done in Shanghai. Might be interesting, though there is a major traditional kunqu (southern, lyrical) opera Jade Hairpin in Amsterdam in June.

Even more interesting might be King Lear adapted, directed and performed by Wu Hsing-kuo and the Contemporary Legend Theatre. "Delivering a one man tour de force, Wu Hsing-kuo simultaneously depicts multiple characters, from the maniacal Lear and his ally Gloucester, to his evil, grasping daughters and the pitiful, lonely Fool. Further pushing the boundaries of traditional theatrical convention, he also appears as himself, exploring his own identity as an actor in relation to the fictional characters he portrays." goes the blurb. This sounds good as Wu is approaching the universal theme with fresh ideas, rather than doing a pastiche. Could well be the sleeper hit of the whole Festival. HERE is a linik to his 2007 performance of Lear in New York.

Lots of good recitals - Matila, Kozena, Damrau, Keenlyside, Kirchschlager etc most of which we can hear in London at the Wigmore Hall anytime. More of a surprise might be Julian Prégardien, son of Christoph. They're doing a two tenor, father and son recital, which should be interesting. Luckily, that is being broadcast so we won't miss out.

What will the BBC Proms 2011 have to offer? Hold your breath a little longer....