A fun book to draw from when teaching modern Japan is Soeda Azembo and Michael Lewis, A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembo, Popular Song and Modern Mass Culture in Japan ( London: Routledge, 2009). You can’t assign it, since it is not in our databases and costs too much, and maybe would not work that way anyway. You can pull a lot of songs from it though. There is a short introduction (and plenty of explanatory footnotes) by Lewis, but mostly it is a translation of Soeda Azembo’s autobiography, with lots of lyrics and maybe more importantly, lots of stuff about the life of an enka singer in Meiji and Taisho. If you are interested in street level politics and culture this is a good book.
Some of the lyrics are standard protest stuff
From that hairpin adorning the locks of the nobleman ‘s
mistress
What so brilliantly shines?
Perhaps diamonds?
No,no
Just the greasy sweat from a darling peasant’s headAmong those worldly gentleman who love their liquor
What so brilliantly sparkles?
Perhaps champagne?
No,no
Just the bloody tears from the darling factory girl’s eyesAnd decorating the jutting breasts of state ministers and
generals
What so brightly glitters?
Maybe the Medal of the Golden Pheasant?No, no
Just the whitened skulls of our darling soldier boys (pgxxvii)
but the book does not really directly tie Azembo to “protest politics”, although he was for a while a connected to the Japan Communist party and was in trouble the the police pretty much all the time. Lewis sees him as an example of “Gramsci’s..organic intellectual” (p.xxix) This would probably apply to all the enka singers, who were definitely critical of “the Establishment” but not really lining up with the Movement for Popular Rights or the Minseito or whatever. They might roam the street rapping about how corrupt officials were.
If growing whiskers makes an official
Then rats and cats, one and all, officials be. p.xxii
or sing thinly veiled attacks on the delay in getting a constitution (which they were supposed to get in Meiji 17)
Her age, seventeen,
The peak time of connubial ripeness
At twenty-three, without doubt, the bloom will be off her rose
But her old man is difficult and won’t allow a teenage marriage
Ah well
What the Hell
I’ll just wait till she’s twenty-three. p.xx
but of course they also had lots of songs praising the military, lamenting the earthquake, singing the joys of a train ride, or instructing people on the importance of treaty revision or whatever.
It is a useful book for pointing out to students how a lot of the left/right dichotomies that they may be familiar with from American or European history don’t really work here. The book, published in 1940, opens with the song “Advance! New Order. Advance!”
Strike!
Iron is easily forged when hot And what has made our nation’s people align themselves in countless rows
Compliantly obedient to the reform?
The New Order of Imperial Rule Assistance!!
You, of course!
You are the byword of meaningful reform
You are the foundation root of guiding policies
The eminent spirit of Japan
Our totalitarianism
Our New Order built on the fusion on all creation
Did he tenkō ? Well, he was not really a leftist to begin with. What he really was was a schemer and an entrepreneur and and a man with a plan. Well, I guess an organic intellectual, if you want to be Gramscian about it.
There were a number of songs about the heroic Lt. Colonel Fukshima Yasumasa, who heroically rode across Siberia to prove to some German officers that Japanese were great horsemen.
Now having distinguished himself draped around both shoulders
He wears garlands of his glory
Waiting to welcome our returning Lieutenant Colonel
At Nagasaki, Kobe, Yokohama
On the boulevards of Tokyo
His compatriots forty million strong
With cheers and applause they welcome him
At banquets overflowing with sincerity
A crown for fame so elevated
The sound of fireworks lifted high into the sky
The glory shines unto the five continents!
He sang these songs because they were popular, and he wanted an audience, of course. He was also swept up in the patriotic fever like everyone else.
One of his competitors was a bit “churlish”, however, and gave new lyrics to the tune to try and boost their popularity.
Behold! Behold! That magnificent feat of erudition!
Hail the Asahi Shinbun!
The newspaper of the Empire of Japan
A heavy burden upon our company’s shoulders
Yet our staff and workers bear it with pride
Our reporting gets the jump on all those other papers.
You might think that he would resent being replaced by new media, and he does, but when they send a team of a dozen or so employees in company jackets with a leader in a coat and hat with shining gold brocade, singing the new lyrics and handing out flyers…Well, he has to consider that a “brilliant business stratagem”. pg. 41
Anyway, there are a lot of interesting song lyrics in here that you can use in class, and if students get tired of them you can always threaten to sing them.
