Apollōn Ōmikami

When Japan first opened its country and economy to Western cultures and influences in the mid-nineteenth century, Isawa Shūji (1851–1917) argued that Western-style songs were the right way to raise the next generations of Japanese children. He grounded much of this argument in claims about Ancient Greek music, writing that it was not only the fundament of Western music, but also an ancient historical link to Japanese music, via a shared origin in India. In order to demonstrate that it “truly corresponded with the music of this country [Japan],” Isawa wrote transcriptions of an Ancient Greek Hymn to Apollo into the traditional music notations for no fewer than five instruments used in gagaku and included them in his 1884 report on Western music, arguably the first of its kind in modern Japan. In this act of transcription, Isawa not only claimed the prestigious heritage of Ancient Greek music for Japan but also argued that Western music was a close cousin of Japanese music. Our article investigates Isawa's claim about the close relations between Japanese and Ancient Greek music: Exactly which coincidences between the two traditions was he observing? We argue that while Isawa's claim was clearly motivated by his goals and ideologies, the comparison was not a musically empty one either—that there were threads of sonic similarity that he followed, which shaped the ways Japan both took in Western music and reconceived of Japanese music for the new era.