Japan has produced some of the greatest performers and scholars of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music. Musicologist Isoyama Tadashi noted in 2003 that almost every day in Japan there is a concert of Bach’s music somewhere and recordings of his music and literature about him sell well. Since Masaaki Suzuki formed Bach Collegium Japan in 1990, he counted between 100 and 200 amateur local choirs dedicated to Bach’s music springing up across the country. Bach, known in Japan as the “Father of Music,” and whose portrait hangs in the music classrooms of elementary and middle schools, has become a central figure in Japan’s musical modernity. Why?

This PhD dissertation project, as a case study of global music history, ethnographically shows how music traditionally considered “Western” has been mediated by socio-cultural configurations, forms of knowledge production, and contingent desires held by specific social actors in Japan. Perhaps most importantly, relating to current movements to “decolonize” academia, this study highlights the voices of Japanese musicians and scholars themselves and their global contributions to Bach. Beyond the passive “imitator of the West” tropes uncritically applied to Japan, I represent Japan as a “field” and elucidate wider global, institutional, historical, and sociocultural configurations that have afforded Japanese individuals opportunities to encounter Bach’s music at all, as well as the affordances that Bach’s music offers them in turn.

As an anthropological reception history of Japanese engagements with Bach’s music until the present day, my dissertation makes use of archival sources, interviews with scholars and musicians, ethnographic fieldwork, educational materials, Japanese musicological research, and music periodicals to further understand how and why Bach has remained important for Japanese musical life for over a century. My PhD thesis traces Bach through the following topics: 1. 19^th-century Cultural Encounters; 2. Nation Building and Modernity; 3. National Identity and Education; 4. Musicology in Japan; 5. Transcultural Performers and Performance Practice. This colloquium talk will offer an overview of the dissertation but will focus on chapter 4 – a topic exploring a neo-liberal crisis facing music studies and the humanities in Japan, and beyond.

Thomas is currently a PhD candidate at Cornell University. His current research focuses on the intersection between Japan, popular music, ritual, and so-called “baroque music” from an anthropological perspective. After graduating in composition and aesthetics from The University of Glasgow (MA 1^st-class hons), he was funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) to conduct research on the reception history of Western Music in Japan and was awarded an MA (distinction) from Tokyo University of the Arts there for his dissertation on Bach’s music in Meiji-era (1868–1912) Japan (written in Japanese). Thomas continued his studies on Oxford University’s MSc Social Anthropology (distinction) course before coming to Cornell University for his doctoral studies. His PhD research has been generously funded by the East Asia Program/Einaudi Center, the Japan Foundation, the Murray Travel Grant, and the Department of Music.