Handbook of Japanese Music in the Modern Era

It is a pleasure to announce a new book that promises to become an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the current state of music in Japan. The Handbook of Japanese Music in the Modern Era is soon being published by Brill. It is edited by Henry Johnson, an accomplished ethnomusicologist who is known for his important books on Japanese instruments. Johnson has worked in this field for many years and is a skilled and meticulous editor who carefully selected leading experts to write on an array of topics for this anthology. Here is how the book is described:

“Exploring an array of captivating topics, from hybridized Buddhist music to AI singers, this book introduces Japanese music in the modern era. The twenty-five chapters show how cultural change from the late nineteenth century to the present day has had a profound impact on the Japanese musical landscape, including the recontextualization and transformation of traditional genres, and the widespread adoption of Western musical practices ranging from classical music to hip hop.”

I am happy to have developed a chapter for this book on the teaching of musical instruments in Japanese schools, co-authored with Koji Matsunobu as a research outcome of the Global Competence Partnership project between our institutions. We look forward to further collaborations of this kind, and I encourage anyone interested in this topic to examine the book.

Here is a link to our chapter: 

https://brill.com/edcollchap/book/9789004687172/BP000027.xml