Sankyoku Magazine and the Invention of the Shakuhachi as Religious Instrument in Early 20th-Century Japan

The early 20th century was a period in which understandings of music, religion, and the nation-state underwent rapid change in Japan. In this article I examine Japanese cultural discourse from the first decades of the 20th century in which the shakuhachi, a Japanese bamboo flute, was frequently portrayed as a religious instrument. In some cases, this discourse referenced pre-20th century historical affiliations of the shakuhachi with the Fuke-sect, an organization that was loosely affiliated to Rinzai Zen Buddhism. But the article also explores how religio-musical discourse surrounding the shakuhachi intersected with developments in modern Japanese religious life, as well as pre-WWII developments in the political life of Japan and Asia. Drawing primarily on articles from Sankyoku, one of the most important music magazines in early 20th century Japan, I show how public discourse contained in the media and other forms of writing is an important way to understand the rapid developments taking place in music and religion in Japan at this time

Theorizing the Okinawan body —Fieldwork on physical gestures in the performance of Okinawan classical music

　Musicians in traditions around the world use their bodies in a varietyof ways in the process of performing and teaching music. The mostobvious example is the movement required to physically produce soundfrom an instrument. Movements are also widely used to transmitparticular emotions during performance, to signal to other musicians ormembers of the audience, or to communicate between teacher and studentin the transmission process. This paper presents the results of an ongoingfieldwork project to investigate the use of physical gestures in Okinawanclassical music, a tradition that uses a number of stylized gestures,particularly those of the hands and head. These physical gestures are quiteoften discussed in the course of lessons and performances, and have alsobeen theorized to some extent by Okinawan musicians and scholars.　In this paper I focus particularly on movements of the head and upperbody in the Okinawan tradition. I consider the ways that these movementswere theorized and formalized in the early 20th century by Okinawanmusic scholars, as well as through their incorporation into a notationsystem. I also analyze two field recordings made during the course of theproject. The first of these illustrates the use of upper body movements inperformance as a way of embodying melodic movement, while the secondillustrates how body movements are actively used as a part of the teachingprocess

A Mysterious Island in the Digital Age: Technology and Musical Life in Ulleungdo, South Korea

This paper contributes to the growing body of ethnomusicological research about music-making on small islands, focusing on the remote South Korean island of Ulleungdo (literally, ‘Mysterious Island’). Historically, a number of factors have conspired to present serious obstacles to the Ulleungdo islanders' musical aspirations. However, since the early 1990s, enterprising amateurs have managed to generate and maintain a variety of musical activities in spite of these obstacles: church ensembles, karaoke, saxophone clubs, and more. Paralleling other island music studies, this paper seeks to show how the condition of being an Ulleungdo islander—entailing a complex of varied experiences, values, and relationships—has informed music-making over the years. However, here, the discussion remains firmly focused upon the islanders' use of technology since an acute reliance on technology has come to permeate Ulleungdo's musical life, with certain electronic devices commonly regarded as essential facilitators of musical expression. Drawing from the islanders' own testimonies, studies of Ulleungdo's cultural history, and works addressing technology's applications within and effects upon local communities, the authors explore how and why this condition of musical techno-reliance developed, how it is manifest in the present-day, and its broader implications for the island's music culture and identity

How ‘Circumpolar’ is Ainu Music? Musical and Genetic Perspectives on the History of the Japanese Archipelago

<div><p>Understanding the cultural and genetic origins of the Ainu of northern Japan has important implications for understanding the history of the Japanese archipelago. Ethnomusicologists have tended to emphasise connections between Ainu music and a ‘circumpolar’ culture area. However, the ‘dual structure’ model from physical anthropology describes the Ainu as descendants of the first inhabitants of Japan with minimal circumpolar influence. To examine Ainu musical diversity empirically from a comparative perspective, we analysed 680 traditional songs from two Ainu and 33 surrounding East Asian and circumpolar populations. The Ainu repertoire contained a majority (∼50%) of unique stylistic song-types and lower frequencies of types shared with circumpolar (∼40%) and East Asian (∼10%) populations. These frequencies were similar to the corresponding frequencies of mitochondrial DNA types within the Ainu gene pool (∼50%, ∼30% and ∼20%, respectively), consistent with an emerging ‘triple structure’ model of Japanese archipelago history.</p></div

"There's nothing people won't do to one another, if the circumstances are right": Male Rape and the Politics of Representation in John Harvey's Police Procedural Easy Meat

The article discusses portrayals of male rape in John Harvey's police procedural novel Easy Meat (1996), exploring how the novel interrogates the representation of sexual crime, male rape, and masculinity in crime fiction. By examining Harvey's portrayal of masculinity and sexuality in Easy Meat, the author explores the ways in which crime fiction problematizes the politics of representing sexual crime