32—
Music

One night in a snowstorm I was listening to Tristan und Isolde at the Theater an der Wien and was so totally entranced by it that I became oblivious of myself. For me, that was a completely new experience.

I had imagined that opera, as a form of entertainment, comprised two elements: a lifeless, mundane melodrama accompanied by good singing. The relationship between the two, I thought, could not be nearly as close as that between a kabuki play and samisen music. That night, for the first time, I realized how utterly ignorant I had been. I discovered Wagner. There I found expressions of tumultuous emotions that almost defied description, expressions charged with such intensity that they had no conceivable equal in music or, indeed, in any other form of art. It struck me that their musical representation of irrationality, destructiveness, and coerciveness not only precisely and quintessentially defines Wagner; it also characterizes German romanticism as a whole, recapitulated as it is in his music. It represents the core of Strindberg's plays or the dark, uncanny passions (or tenacity of purpose) in Munch's paintings, along with their curious sense of raw immediacy and internal tumult.

Up to that time, my attention to German culture had been drawn not to the subtlety of its sensibilities or to the pragmatism in its way of thinking, but to the precision and rationality in its systems of thought. When I was working as a specialist in internal medicine, there was no other contemporary textbook in the world as systematic and comprehensive as Müller's Handbuch .^[1] And in terms of the massive extermination of

[1] Johannes Peter Müller (1801–58), a German physician, comparative anatomist, pioneer of experimental physiology, and author of Handbuch derPhysiologie des Menschen (1833–40); according to George W. Corner, it was "a standard textbook for two generations" (Encyclopedia Americana [1976], 19:556).

human beings outside the battlefield, perhaps few examples in history can parallel the systematic and highly organized act at Auschwitz. But beyond this highly organized, systematic, and rational aspect of German culture, it has another facet that manifests itself with such extraordinary vibrancy, so pregnant with tempestuous passions, that one cannot help but be lured into a state of Rausch , to use an indigenous German word.^[2] After listening to Wagner, I realized for the first time the utter irresistibility that is its intoxicating appeal. If such a cultural duality exists in Germany, how are the two aspects interrelated? For a long time, incoherent thoughts about this errant question would continue to stir in my mind.

Tristan und Isolde did not simply provoke my half-whimsical thoughts about northern European culture. More significantly, by adding a new element of "rapture" to my experience, it changed the internal order of my world. Until then, I had never gotten drunk. At least I had never experienced self-oblivion in a state of euphoria, nor had I ever wanted to. Whether wine elicits tears or grief, it simply brings about the kind of psychological and physiological state that no voluntary action can induce.^[3] In a crowd, it's relatively easy to get a feeling of intoxicated elation by embracing strangers, synchronizing footsteps, and singing or howling together. Yet I never appreciated that kind of instantaneous intoxication. When I looked at the pictures of Hitler and his gang in the mass gatherings they organized in the 1930s, I thought that I too might have become euphoric had I joined their ranks wearing their uniform, but the thought nauseated me. In the fifties when I saw men and women in a southern German beer hall drinking, singing, and swaying their bodies arm in arm, it gave me the shivers just to imagine the stupidity of participating in their activity. If I didn't want to join in, my only other alternative was to leave. Outside the beer hall, there was a town near the Alpine mountains and the night air carried with it a faint scent of flowers. I needed the liberty to think as my will dictated—that much was essential for me.

[2] Rausch means intoxication, delirium, or frenzy.

[3] Here Kato^[*] cites the title of a Koga Masao song, "Sake wa namida ka tameiki ka," popular in Japan in the early 1930s. See chapter 4, note 1 for more details.

The psychological state I called "rapture" does not mean, of course, simply "lack of consciousness of self." To reach that state no special circumstances are necessary. I can achieve it, for example, by simply trying to overtake the car ahead while driving. I am conscious only of the speeds and the positions of the cars and the conditions necessary to overtake the car ahead—certainly not the subject, myself, who's doing the overtaking. Or say I'm concentrating on solving a problem in my elementary geometry examination. What's in my consciousness is the triangle and not "I." Lack of consciousness of self is not an exceptional condition at all; it is the most commonplace state of our daily life.

But when I am in a state of rapture, as happens sometimes, I am oblivious not merely of myself but of everything except the agent of my rapture. Moreover, as long as the state of rapture continues, I wish I could remain in that state forever. In such moments, I am both passive (in terms of emotion) and active (in terms of value orientation). But when I try to overtake a car or solve a problem in an examination, all I am doing is directing my active attention to the object, lest it be unsafe to pass or impossible to solve the problem within the allotted time. In a state of rapture, no real action or precise thinking is possible. And yet it is only in such a condition that values become absolute and totally internalized. While I myself did not actively seek after such a condition, something from the outside seized me and enticed me into that experience. What then were those agents? Surely, they were not grandiose ideals about humanity, or religion, or even literature. In the sense I described, I think only the woman I love and music could have such a power to captivate me. They both came into my life at about the same time, taking me unawares and seizing me by force. At that time, there was nothing more valuable in the world to me. Not only was I oblivious of myself, I was oblivious of the whole world. That was how Wagner's music struck me at one time.

Until then, music had never affected me like that. When I was a child, I listened to Mother playing the melancholy and monotonous tunes of "Rokudan" on her koto, notes that filled our large, dim house in Shibuya's Konno-cho^[*] like a perfumed mist in the air.^[4] But instead of making me forget everything, they only reminded me of everything and

[4] "Rokudan" is a representative solo koto piece composed by Yatsuhashi Kengyo^[*] (1614–85), the father of popular koto music and the pioneer of the Yatsuhashi school.

evoked all sorts of fantasies. I was moved by Yamada Kosaku's^[*] "Karatachi no hana" (Wild orange blossoms) and "Kono michi" (This trail), and I also very much enjoyed the so-called kayokyoku^[*] , popular songs such as "Akagi no komori-uta" (Lullaby of Akagi) and "Kare susuki" (Withered eulalia).^[5] Once, while practicing on his shakuhachi , Father said he couldn't understand the mentality of those who enjoyed such silly songs, but Mother responded by saying that preference in music had nothing to do with the mind. At that time, I couldn't quite figure out what the lyrics of the popular songs really meant, but the melodies impressed me beyond words.

Nevertheless, this state of contentment did not last long. Once I realized what the lyrics meant, I got tired of them. Far from being evocative, their sentimental melodies now turned into a source of irritation. Songs I once loved so much now gave me the shivers. Perhaps one reason was that just when I was trying to cultivate some peace of mind—and unfortunately I needed to try that quite often—all too often such songs forced themselves on me. On my return voyage to Japan after my long stay in Europe, I heard such popular songs for the first time in several years. The ship was a Japanese freighter, and Japanese food, Japanese conversation—indeed everything Japanese—brought a sense of nostalgia. But I just could not stand the songs. There was a loudspeaker in my cabin, and when the central control was turned on, these popular songs, with their characteristic nasal crooning, automatically filled every room on the ship. I asked that the loudspeaker in my room be turned off, only to be told that they did not have individual controls. I then implored them to at least turn down the volume, but to no avail. The songs invaded my room throughout the day, and there were two more weeks to go before the ship arrived at a Japanese port. So I smashed the loudspeaker and spent my time reading Ronsard's poetry instead. The reading was boring, but it was not as unpleasant as the popular songs. Even today when I hear such songs on the streets of Tokyo, I recall my cabin with the broken loudspeaker, the undulating horizon of the South China

[5] On Yamada Kosaku's "Karatachi no hana" (1924) see chapter 4, note 1; the trifoliate orange plant's white flowers bloom in late spring. • For "Kono michi," also with lyrics by Kitahara Hakushu^[*] , Kato^[*] cites its first line, "Kono michi wa itsuka kita michi" (This trail we once trod). • The lullaby (1934), by Takeoka Nobuyuki, was made popular by the singer Shoji^[*] Taro^[*] (1898–1972). • On "Kare susuki" see chapter 4, note 1.

Sea outside my circular window, and a few lines of poetry by a sixteenth-century poet from a foreign land.

A melody or a piece of music often evokes memories of the specific time and place I heard it. For instance, the flute on the no^[*] stage would remind me of Suidobashi's^[*] No^[*] Theater during the war, César Franck's Variations symphoniques of the second-class patients' ward at the Tokyo University Hospital, Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier of Hongo's^[*] Nishikatamachi, and Chopin's ballads of the summer in Shinano Oiwake. Among the works of Stravinsky, The Soldier's Tale would always bring back memories of the Redoutensaal in Vienna, and Oedipus Rex of the Palais de Chaillot and the place de Trocadéro in Paris, or the composer Bekku Sadao.^[6] Figaro and Vienna, Così fan tutte and Salzburg . . . To be sure, all of these connections were coincidental. Yet I often felt there was a certain correlation between the land and the music. I have seen Der Rosenkavalier many times in Vienna, an opera so beautiful that no words can do it justice, and every time I saw it I was convinced that it was impossible to talk about the beauty of the female voice without bringing Richard Strauss into the picture.

Even so, when I saw the same opera in London, it was a little different. During the intermission at Covent Garden, a distinguished-looking man turned to me and asked, "What do you think of that?" By "that," I wondered whether he meant the music itself or the orchestra's performance. If he meant the former, the subject struck me as a little too grandiloquent to raise during the intermission of the opera. But the orchestra's performance was not so exceptional that one would be inspired to start a conversation with the next man. "Well, I thought it was quite good, but . . . ," I stammered out something. But without waiting for me to finish, he snapped, "I've never seen anything so obscene! Absolutely outrageous!"

Later, when Der Rosenkavalier was performed in Tokyo, I was totally amazed to learn that it was sponsored or recommended by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Even if one does not go so far as to describe the play as "obscene," surely one can't regard it as something beneficial to

[6] Bekku Sadao (1922–), a graduate of Tokyo University in aesthetics, studied music in Paris from 1950 to 1954 and later taught at Chuo^[*] University; he composed symphonies (Kangengaku no tame no futatsu no inori [Two prayers for orchestral music]) and an opera based on three kyogen^[*] plays called Sannin no onnatachi no monogatari (The story of three women, 1964, revised in 1986).

the moral education of the Japanese empire's young men and women. If the Ministry of Education had indeed opened up as far as that, I thought, it would not be long before Lady Chatterley's Lover could serve as an English textbook in our schools.^[7]

But when I saw the performance, it was as healthy as an athletic meet—cheerful, innocent, and full of youthful vigor. Nothing in it offered even the slightest hint about the dark shadow lurking behind the love affair of a middle-aged woman with her young lover, or the pathetic predicament of an old man out to get a young girl with his mind running wild with erotic fantasies. Of course that was not Richard Strauss, and perhaps it could not even be called music. I could only marvel how a place like Tokyo, with its youthfulness and vitality, finally succeeded in transforming even an opera like dear old Der Rosenkavalier , the last glory of the fallen central European empire with its perverted world mixed with irony and cynicism, into a vivacious and morally correct play. Outside the theater, crowds of young people were walking on the street and saying, "Hey, man, you know . . . " Automobiles raced frantically in all directions as if they had all gone mad, and the words "Great Divine Prosperity to Japan" floated across the air polluted with exhaust fumes.^[8]

I never got into the habit of comparing Japan and Europe at every turn, because I think such comparisons are not very rewarding either in the practical or in the theoretical sense. But when Der Rosenkavalier was performed in Tokyo, it inevitably reminded me of a baroque city in a faraway land. According to the dictionary, the word "baroque" was originally a Portuguese word referring to pearls of irregular shape. During the prosperous days in the past, people in this old city seemed to prefer somewhat irregular-shaped pearls to the perfectly rounded ones, thinking that the former afforded greater sophistication. Tristan und Isolde

[7] In a notorious postwar censorship case in 1950, the government prosecuted the distinguished critic and novelist Ito^[*] Sei (1905–69) for his translation of an "obscene" work, Lady Chatterley's Lover (Koyama shoten, 1950). Ito lost his case in 1957, despite the support of other prominent writers and psychologists. In 1980 the Supreme Court reversed the verdict, more than a decade after Ito's^[*] death.

[8] The setting of Der Rosenkavalier is aristocratic Vienna around 1740, during the early reign of Empress Maria Theresa. • Apparently for sarcastic effect, Kato's^[*] words call on the phrase Jimmu keiki , literally "the greatest prosperity since the time of the Jimmu emperor" (Japan's first emperor, who ascended the throne in 660 B.C. [Nihon shoki , 720]).

is a love song. Der Rosenkavalier , on the other hand, is a song reminiscing about a bygone love and a parody of a love song. How fitting it was to hear it in a large metropolis of a small country so full of recollections about the old empire and so cynical and ambivalent about its own present.

It might be an exaggeration to say that I grew up watching Japanese puppet plays and listening to the gidayu^[*] narrators, but since my student days I have been fond of the harmony produced between the gidayu recitations and the sound of the samisen. The Western equivalent of gidayu is what the French call a chanson . If one listens only to the melody without the lyrics, it is not particularly interesting. But the lyrics are often quite clever, and the music often goes well with the words. It is almost like a narrative. In the case of Die Winterreise , knowing the words certainly makes it more interesting, but even without them the music itself can be enjoyable. Yet without the words, Juliette Gréco's narrative is meaningless. The only difference is that the Western version of gidayu is more abstract and addresses more universal themes than those in Japanese puppet plays. "Je hais le dimanche!" All those "Sundays" she refers to can surely be found in any city in the world.

I was fond of music, at least of some of the pieces I happened to hear. Not only did I enjoy it, but music has come to occupy a special position in the body of my collective experience, one I could not easily replace. The significance of its position contrasted markedly with my lack of training and knowledge about the subject. Nevertheless, I did become acquainted with a number of composers and learned about their thoughts on music. Their ideas were not incomprehensible to me—at least that was how I felt most of the time. Ogura Ro^[*] would talk only about ideas he had thoroughly considered, and when he spoke he was marvelously articulate.^[9] Few people I know either inside or outside of Japan can approach his lucidity, precision, and single-mindedness—for only a single-minded artist can do his work—in addressing the artist's creative process and the gist of the complex questions involved. "It won't do you much good to aim at effect, don't you think?" Zeami also said the same thing in the old days. Ogura said it not because he had read Zeami but because

[9] Ogura Ro (1916–), a prize-winning composer and the author of Gendai ongaku o kataru (On contemporary music [Iwanami shinsho, 1970]). Kato's^[*] essay on Ogura, "Ogura Ro mata wa ongaku no gendai" (Ogura Ro or contemporary music) is in Kato^[*] Shuichi^[*] chosakushu^[*] , 11:339–60.

he had contemplated his art in the same way Zeami had contemplated his. If one were to elaborate fully on the significance of his words, it could easily take more than a hundred pages.

Yoshida Hidekazu has also become a long-time friend of mine.^[10] A generous man with broad erudition and precise knowledge about music, he would gently correct my mistakes when I made naive remarks, make up for my inadequacies, and turn my inconsequential ideas into something that makes sense. And he was good enough to talk to me about a subject he knew so thoroughly that he must have felt wearied in the process. He also knows much about art other than music, and he can freely talk about all kinds of issues at various levels of abstraction, in Japanese, German, or English. I can scarcely think of a better person with whom to have an enjoyable and a uniquely witty conversation.

Another person who enjoyed a good conversation was Mrs. I, a professor at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris and a violin teacher in Tokyo. Politics, society, customs, and people—whatever the subject might be she would talk volubly, like a rapid-fire machine gun. Her views were explicit and emphatic, revealing distinct traits of her personality. I greatly enjoyed her way of coming up with quick and clear-cut answers to complex issues. But when our conversation turned occasionally to music, her manners would undergo a complete change regardless of how trivial the issue might be. Suddenly her voice softened; she became contemplative as she sought the right words, which she would then utter slowly and prudently. I respected her attitude. At that moment, the artist was no longer articulating her personal views but the facts and the truths alone. Any observer could tell how totally serious and engaged she was.

I am not fond of sentimental music. Chikamatsu's michiyuki is not sentimental; it is suffused only with the love the man and woman have for each other in their hearts. The only experience in my life comparable to the euphoric rapture a certain kind of music evoked in me is having a woman I love in my arms. Whether the embrace is long or short is just a relative matter; that it must end at some point in time is just a reality of the human condition. Music has a beginning and an end. An individual life, social institutions, and history itself also have their be-

[10] Yoshida Hidekazu (1913–), a celebrated music critic, founder and director of Nijisseiki ongaku kenkyujo^[*] (Research institute for twentieth-century music) and head of the Mito Art Tower (see his 10-vol. collected work Yoshida Hidekazu zenshu^[*] [Hakusuisha, 1975–76]).

ginnings and their ends. If there is a meaning somewhere to it at all, that meaning must be appreciated in the present. No amount of treasure equals a moment of togetherness with one's love. Within the world of art, I found its equivalent in music. Did my experience in music teach me that, or did that turn music into such an experience for me? I cannot tell.