Gagaku, Music of the Empire:Tanabe Hisao and musical heritage as national identity

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th century, Tanabe Hisao (1883‑1984), the first Japanese musicologist, elaborated a history of Japanese music in which Gagaku was presented as a original music not only of Japan, but also of all countries in Asia. This concept of Gagaku is consistent with the imperial and colonial ideology before World War II, and still remains up to the present day. It is for example the decision of the Ministry of Education of Japan to designate Gagaku performed by the Court musicians of the Music Department of the Imperial Household as an “Important Intangible Cultural Property” on May 12, 1955, that makes Japan forget the history of musical colonization in aid of more positive re-reading. Gagaku is then described as a cultural relic of the “Asian Continent”, a term substituted for that of the “Greater East Asia Co‑Prosperity Sphere” in the 1940s.