Early Acceptance of Western Music in Indonesia and Japan

Abstract

Indonesia and Japan shared a rather similar historical background in their contact with Western music. Sixteenth-century Indonesia and Japan, upon which this investigation would be based, marked the beginning of the early Western music acceptance, mainly through the Portuguese merchants and missionary activities in both countries. It was especially the spice trade on the Straits of Mallaca that brought the Portuguese ships to land and noticed about what they called the 'spice island' (formerly Mollucas, now Maluku) of Indonesia in 1511. It was also in Mallaca that the Jesuits met the Japanese named Yajiro, who told about his country, became the first Japanese Christian and brought the Jesuits to Japan in 1549. Amongst so many kinds of the Christianity impacts, the introduction of Western music would become the main concerns in this paper. Sixteenth-century Gregorian songs can still be found in Maluku and Flores of Indonesia and in Kyushu of Japan, even though, for the time being, its texts have become very corrupted. Current musical life situation in Japan is said to be comparable with that of Western countries, as there are fine orchestras almost in every large city in Japan. In Indonesia, on the contrary, there is no single professional orchestra yet even in Jakarta today. Keywords: Acceptance of Western music; Current musical life; Indonesia and Japan.