The First European Description of Japan, 1585 (55 page)

The bamboo flute is more like a “fife.” The naturally shrill quality of the instrument, which makes it a favorite for military bands in the West, achieves a new level in the sound world of the Japanese. While the Japanese fife is capable of a soft and gentle sound in the low range, it more frequently is used to produce a blasting sound. This blasting has two characteristics not often found in Western music. First, it is not always worked up to in the Western manner where sounds crescendo, but often begins in its full fury. That is to say, it is explosive. It hits as strong gusts of wind often do. Second, the fifer does not stop when the sound threatens to break, but enjoys blasting it up and over its limits. This critical break is played upon like a surfer riding a wave, and the thrill to the initiated—or those with an ear for it—is pretty much the same.

11. In our dances, the dancers move to the sound of the tambourine, but they do not sing; Japanese dancers must always sing to the sound of the drum
.

Frois' mention here of the tambourine suggests he had in mind folk dances or even courtly dances (
danzas de sarao
) that were performed by local dancers in conjunction with
autos
or religious feasts.
²⁶

It is difficult to know the Japanese referent in this distich. The hourglass-shaped drum (
ko tsuzumi
) that is part of the
Noh
ensemble (see
#10
above) was very popular in Japan at the time Frois wrote. It served as accompaniment for all manner of performers and party-goers, including samurai on picnics or flower-viewing outings.
²⁷
Music was a regular feature of daily life in Japan and one can well imagine that Frois might also have witnessed Japanese peasants singing (and dancing) while sowing rice to the accompaniment of a drum and perhaps the fife mentioned above.
²⁸

12. Our performers move about upright, with rattles; in Japan they carry fans and always move about [
stooped over
]
²⁹
or like people looking down at the ground in search of something they have lost
.

Rattles figure prominently in the
folia
, a traditional dance of Portuguese peasants that underwent “refinement” in Iberian royal courts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The name for the dance derived from
folle
, which means crazy, apparently suggested by the seemingly chaotic sound produced by the dancers wielding their rattles.
³⁰

For Japan, Frois presumably was referring to the popular Buddhist dances (
odori
), such as the present day
bon odori
, which is performed in late July through September as part of a joyous festival of the dead (ultimately rooted in Chinese Buddhism). The
bon odori
is a circle dance of sorts, except that individuals do not hold hands (as in Europe), but rather progress individually in a counter-clockwise fashion, with everyone synchronously moving forward and back, and then left and right, making a bent over or swooping movement. Japanese performers do indeed look like they might be searching the ground for a lost item.

13. Our dances are performed during the day; theirs, nearly always at night
.

Most Iberian folk dancing took place during weddings, feast days, harvest festivals, etc., which mostly took place outdoors and in the afternoon (or before dark).
³¹
Such dances are commensurate with the Japanese
bon odori
,
³²
which, as noted above, is a festive dance held each year in late summer or early fall.

14. European dance involves many [
different
] movements by the feet; Japanese dance is more solemn and for the most part is done with the hands
.

This is one of the few distichs where Frois explicitly speaks of Europe as opposed to the more ambiguous “ours” or “we.” Europeans, be they from the north or the south, Catholics or Protestants, let their feet and legs do the talking when it came to dance.
³³
The
galliard
, which was popular throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, typically had five steps to a measure and featured leaps and jumps.

From the Japanese perspective people who are possessed or otherwise experiencing an altered state of consciousness whirl about and leap wildly, as Europeans were wont to do. An actor performing the lion dance (
shishimai
) might also become exuberant. However, generally speaking, Japanese dance is restrained and stylized, as is the case with Japanese music, where silence between notes is as
meaningful as the notes themselves. “Doing nothing” or non-movement is integral to Japanese dance.
³⁴

15. Our music, with its multi-part harmonies, is gentle and full; in Japan, since they all screech, singing a one-part melody, it is the most horrendous music possible
.

The European music that Frois knew, presumably polyphonic masses, motets, and some of the secular
cantigas
of the period,
³⁵
made a big deal of harmony (multiple layers of sound that formed a complex background to a primary melody).

As Tamba explains, Japanese singing as encountered in
Noh
reflects a different esthetic (as compared with Western singing) and a whole host of vocal skills and techniques, including, for instance, pronounced use of the pharynx (the very back of the mouth, just above the vocal chords) rather than the nasal or oral cavity.
³⁶
Most Westerners seemingly lack the ear to comprehend the complex Japanese voice and hear it instead as primitive cacophony. Isabella Bird was perhaps an exception. Despite finding a Japanese vocal performance “most excruciating” and even complaining that the minor scale was “a source of pain” (an ebullient Christian, she was no doubt into major keys), Bird gamely kept her ears uncovered long enough to offer one of the better descriptions of Japanese traditional singing, one that includes what Frois' contrast misses:

It seemed to me to consist of a hyena-like howl, long and high (a high voice being equivalent to a good voice), varied by frequent guttural, half-suppressed sounds, a bleat, or more respectfully, “an impure shake,” which is very delicious to a musically educated Japanese audience which is both scientific and highly critical, but eminently distressing to European ears.
³⁷

16. Vibrato exists in all the nations of Europe; among the Japanese there is no one who uses vibrato
.

Frois is apparently still talking about singing (as opposed to instrumental music), in which case his observation about
vibrato
(a tremulous effect imparted by slight and rapid variations in pitch) is interesting, inasmuch as music scholars disagree about the prevalence of
vibrato
in sixteenth century vocal music. Although Frois seems to imply that
vibrato
was widely used in Europe, the question remains as to whether it was used with discretion or as an incessant “disfigurement” of musical performance.
³⁸

Westerners such as Frois apparently have difficulty recognizing Japanese
vibrato
because the fluctuation in pitch that characterizes
vibrato
in
Noh
strays beyond the narrow frequency implied by a Western definition of vibrato.
³⁹

17. Among us, music played on the clavichord
,
⁴⁰
viola, flute, organ, doçaina
,
⁴¹
etc. is considered extremely gentle; the Japanese find all our instruments harsh and unpleasant
.

While the Japanese generally disliked European music, and
vice versa
, some very prominent Japanese found European music engaging. Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598), the top rulers of Japan, reportedly listened with pleasure to performances of Western music.
⁴²
Also, Frois' friend and fellow Jesuit, Organtino, wrote to the Jesuit Father General in Rome that if he had organs and other musical instruments and plenty of missionaries he could convert all of Miyako [Kyoto] and Sakai in a year.
⁴³
Reading this, and knowing that many Japanese and Japanese-Americans perform today in symphony orchestras around the world, one cannot help but wonder if Western music would have made significant inroads in Japan had Japan not isolated itself from the West during the Tokugawa period. Sadly, it seems less certain that European attitudes toward Japanese instruments and music would have changed given more exposure. Writing in 1890, Chamberlain dismissed the idea of Japanese music:

Music, if that beautiful word may be allowed to fall so low as to denote the strummings and squeals of Orientals, is supposed to have existed in Japan ever since mythological times.
⁴⁴

18. We hold the harmony and symmetry of polyphonic
⁴⁵
music in high esteem; the Japanese find it noisy and clamorous
⁴⁶
and do not enjoy it at all
.

Not all Europeans, educated or otherwise, were excited about polyphonic music; some felt that it was a “big noise” that paled in comparison with the beauty of a
solo voice.
⁴⁷
Japan had never known polyphonic music, so one could well imagine that many Japanese had difficulty appreciating polyphony. However, the Japanese did have one type of inadvertent or unconscious harmony created by Buddhist sutra chanting. In a large temple with fifty or more people sing-songing the sutra in their natural tone of voice-each pausing to take his or her breath whenever they naturally run out and perhaps partially synchronizing this subconsciously to the periodic chime-an effect is incidentally or accidentally achieved that is similar to the staggered singing of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

19. Ordinarily among us the music of the nobility is gentler than that of the common folk; we cannot stand to listen to the music of the Japanese nobles, but we find their sailors' music acceptable
.

As is apparent from the two previous contrasts, Europe's nobility generally took pride in supporting choral and chamber music. In 1585, the nobility in Japan was basically the military class, which embraced the relatively stark music found in
Noh
. The “sailors' music” that Frois and other Europeans found acceptable was probably the working chants mentioned in
Chapter 12
(
#10
). Frois may also have heard honest-to-goodness folk-songs or sea chanteys:

The sailors in rowing their boats back and forth in the harbour have a peculiar song entirely unlike the sailors' songs further south [i.e. Yokohama, Kobe and other mainland ports in Japan]. It is musical and catchy … the curious chant as it comes over the water is very pleasant.
⁴⁸

Morse wrote this in Hakodate, at the southern tip of the northernmost island now known as Hokkaido. In a footnote he added something that suggests exactly what Frois heard:

In the extreme southern part of Japan I heard the identical song sung by the sailors of Kagoshima Gulf, and on my return to America a Russian troupe which visited Salem sang a piece called a Volga sailor's song strongly suggesting the Hakodate song. Such an air might easily spread through northern Russia to Kamchatka and find its way to Yezo [Hokaido] through the Kurile Islands.

Because Frois likely predates Russian influence, a more likely source is the Koreans, who have many lullabies that are considered sweet to the ears.
⁴⁹

20. In Europe boys sing an octave higher than men; in Japan they all screech out the same note, the one on which the treble clef rests [on the staff]
.
⁵⁰

European Children at a very early age used song to memorize prayers (e.g.
Ave Maria, Pater noster
), litanies, hymns, and Church teachings/canons, which often were performed in distinctive registers at school, church, or during processions.
⁵¹
The sixteenth century also was a time when cathedrals across Europe combined boys' and mens' choirs to perform polyphonic music (with pre-pubescent boys and some men assigned the alto parts).
⁵²

As noted, the Japanese do not harmonize but rather sing a single melody, in a single key. Frois' usage (screech) once again reveals his inability to “walk the walk” of cultural relativism.

21. Our violas have six strings, except the double-stringed ones
,
⁵³
and they are plucked using the fingers; the Japanese viola has four strings and is played with a kind of comb
.

The violas mentioned here by Frois are unlike the four-stringed bowed instrument that today forms a regular part of string sections or quartets (accompanying two violins and a cello). The six-stringed instrument is a
viola da gamba
, which looks somewhat like a modern cello (or miniature base) and is played with a bow, although the bow hairs are relatively loose and the bow itself is held with the palm up, rather than down, as with a modern cello bow. The plucked, “double-stringed”
viola
mentioned by Frois is the
viola braguesa
,
⁵⁴
which was descended from the Spanish
vihuela
(a guitar-like instrument).

The four-stringed Japanese instrument is a
biwa
, a beautiful, teardrop-shaped lute with a round back and flat front, sound-holes modeled after heavenly bodies, and a neck that bends obliquely back at the top. Like the folk samisen, it is powerfully plucked, or perhaps better said, struck, for a
biwa
player is called a
biwa-uchi
or “
biwa
-striker.” This is accomplished with an enormous plectrum, usually made of ivory, with the size and shape of a thin hatchet head. (Frois wrote “comb” because combs used to be very high-backed and the over-all shape resembles the plectrum.) A large and heavy pick is indeed about as far as one can get from
delicate fingertips. It sounds astounding, but it actually has three clear advantages over a smaller one or simply using the fingertips. First, it prevents almost any acoustic leakage: the vibration that would be lost with a lighter pick is all saved to produce a higher volume. Second, its length translates a small movement of the wrist into a large one at the end of the pick. And third, it can serve as a defensive weapon—against a snowball in a haiku by Issa, but more commonly (at least in pulp literature and “Easterns”!) to cut the throat of another or oneself in defense of virtue. Apparently the large plectrum is a purely Japanese invention, for the Chinese, from whom the
biwa
was adopted, pluck with their fingers.