Aspects of Singing and Dancing in Japanese Popular Culture

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The results of our research made possible by this grant can be summarized as follows :(1)We retained the stance of looking at singing and dancing in Japan in connection with external cultural influences, and thus analyzed American popular music, film musicals. French music-hall performances as well as various other"ethnic"singings and song styles of the world, to find their analogues in Japanese popular songs (kayokyoku), early opera and early school songs (shoka). We drew upon not only written materials but audio-visual recordings that we collected via different routes. Such songs have organized into"The Digital Song Archive of Japan"comprising some 20,000 entries each with discographical notes. This archive will continue to serve as the base of our future researches and will also be essential in our future teaching.(2)The fruits of each individual studies have been published separately. These include studies on the relationship between popular rhythmic structures and the hypothetical"cultural body,"on medieval performances and their religious topos, on the relationship of contemporary art music and contemporary poetry, on avant-garde and traditional aspects in modern dancing, and on the previously untouched"boys"performances in pre-WWII vaudeville theaters.(3)In the twentieth century those music styles that went counter to those of the dominant European elite culture have been privileged. Originated in African American communities, those styles were gradually absorbed via American record industry by the rest of the world. Our study confirmed the idea that seeing popular music as representing global power shift, apart from ethno-musicological premised, is well applicable to the understanding of various cultural phenomena in the"global"world today.