On Receiving the IMS Guido Adler Prize

In 2021, the International Musicological Society awarded me the Guido Adler Prize. It was a great honor for me. The IMS President and IMS Directorium evaluated the diversity of my research, and while a tremendously pleasant surprise to me, it would, I suspect, come as a shock to many of my colleagues in Japan, who have treated me as an eccentric, odd, and weird musicologist.

Those people did not care for my tendency to question established theories of Japanese ethnomusicology, for example, the validity of octave scales for syamisen music (shamisen, a three-string lute) or the independence of respective genres. To investigate these questions, I have employed a diversity of approaches, including information theory, semiology, and intertextuality. For instance, I applied information theory, though on a rudimentary level, to quantitatively analyze the tonal movements of syamisen music. It was also natural for me to employ the semiology of music to classify melodic patterns of syamisen music into two types: those with syntactic meanings (like patterns for beginning or closing pieces) and those with designative meanings (e.g., patterns representing snow or the sound of a temple bell).

In the 1970s, several sociologists in Japan claimed that Japanese musical genres were independent of each other and that performers of each school inside a genre formulated respective “vertical” societies. In order to contradict such an opinion, I pointed out intertextual relationships among different genres in terms of melodic patterns, timbres, etc. The claim has also led people to believe that musicians belonging to different societies or schools do not and cannot perform together. Then, to demonstrate the falsity of this belief, I convened musicians belonging to different artistic and family lineages (vertical societies or schools) and asked them to perform traditional repertoire together in concerts that I organized. My concerts successfully showed that traditional musicians of Japan can perform together, regardless of differences in lineage, with remarkable flexibility.

My diverse experimental activities have consequently led some people to conclude that there was no core to my research. In my mind, however, my research and experiments are tightly linked. To persuade myself and my colleagues, I coined the following Latin maxim as my research motto: “Nihil reputare insulatum” (Consider nothing isolated). I hope that the IMS’s evaluation of my work may lead my colleagues to affirmatively recognize my research diversity.

The Concept of Fieldback Applied to Koto Strings

In my previous contribution to Musicological Brainfood, I explained my term fieldback, that is, the process of returning research results to the field, and also the necessity of including the following process into the concept of fieldback: the process of maintaining a tradition as living one.¹ I tried to further extend this concept, and the following is a report of my trial.

For the last ten years I have tried to develop silk strings for the koto, a thirteen-stringed zither. My aim was to resurrect the traditional sonority of this instrument. Also, I thought that it would protect the performer’s body, which tends to be injured by strong strings made of synthetic fiber, if my aim was achieved.

The sonority of silk strings had been an indispensable part of koto music. In the 1970s, however, more durable strings made of synthetic fiber began to replace silk strings. As a result, koto players are today free from the worry of breaking of strings during public performances. At present, more than 90% of koto players use synthetic fiber strings for practice as well as in public performance. The use of strong synthetic fiber strings has gradually engendered the tendency among players to emphasize a wide dynamic range and to neglect the sonority which had been proper to traditional repertoire.

Curt Sachs, for instance, mentions that a Japanese koto player pulls from strings a delicacy that a European can scarcely savor, let alone imitate.² Naturally, the Saiten (strings) that Sachs heard were silk strings.

Worried about the decline of silk strings, I tried to persuade koto players to once again use silk strings to regain their better sonority and at the same time, to protect their bodies from injury, but in vain. They asked me to supply silk strings of sufficient durability. In those days I had the occasion to explain my intent to Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Japan (presently the Emperor Emeritus and the Empress Emerita). They understood the significance of my aim and for several years kindly allocated a portion of two kinds of the cocoons cultivated with mulberry leaves in the Imperial workshops. Silk strings made from these cocoons were found to be the most appropriate to my objectives and functioned as models for developing new silk strings.

In order to achieve my aim, I have organized a team consisting of musicologists, specialists in fiber technology and acoustics, string makers, instrument makers, and professional performers. The research has necessarily become interdisciplinary as it involved at least the following aspects: entomology (for the selection of silkworm varieties); botany (for mulberry leaves and an artificial diet for silkworms); fiber technology (on the preservation of sericin which is a protein of adhesive nature, reeling methods, decisions on filament size, etc ); the invention of a “silent” koto―for isolating the string sound by minimizing resonance of the instrument―and that of an automatic plucking machine for comparing string strengths; analysis of overtones of string sounds which were recorded in an anechoic chamber; test performances and reviews by professional koto players.

Through these processes, we have succeeded in producing silk strings of sufficient durability and sonority which can be used comfortably for public performance.

When we planned to promote our silk strings to performers, we faced another obstacle. It is the job of specialists to attach the thirteen strings to the koto according to the requirements of each player. Most such specialists, however, have not dealt with silk strings for the last thirty years. The method of silk string attachment differs from that used with synthetic fiber stings. Realizing this, we held workshops to teach the proper way to attach silk strings.

This short report again illustrates the diverse tendencies of my research and the necessity of extending the concept of fieldback in the process of resurrecting in the field the lost sonority of koto music.

The Guido Adler Prize gives me the confidence that I have been correctly proceeding in musicological research. I should like to express my sincere gratitude to the IMS President and the IMS Directorium.

1. Yoshihiko Tokumaru, “Contemplating Musicology from Japanese Perspectives,” Musicological Brainfood 2, no. 1 (2018). https://brainfood.musicology.org
2. “[D]er japanische Kotospieler Feinheiten aus den Saiten zieht, die der Europäer kaum nachempfinden, geschweige denn nachahmen kann.” Curt Sachs, Geist und Werden der Musikinstrumente (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1929; repr., Hilversum: Knuf, 1965), 4.