Abstract

Although Japan Studies have been widely established in American higher education, the field of Japanese music is a particular outlier, with the majority of ensembles established since the 1960s having eventually gone defunct. In contrast, other world music ensembles facing ostensibly similar challenges have flourished and grown in number, most notably various forms of Indonesian gamelan. Although this may appear to be the result of uniquely American factors, considerations of the peripheral status of traditional Japanese music within Japan itself indicate the complex and multifaceted nature of sustainability issues for such ensembles. Columbia University’s gagaku/hōgaku program provides a model for cooperative support of Japanese music education between area studies and music departments. Referring to Catherine Grant and Huib Schippers’ well-developed framework for considering sustainability issues in world music, and drawing from extensive experience teaching and observing traditional Japanese music education in a variety of contexts, this analysis of the model at Columbia provides a new lens for exploring Japanese cultural identity and its relationship to institutional structures. It also offers insight into the significance of broader cultural interest in students’ decisions to study the music of a particular area or time period.

摘要

尽管日本研究已在美国高等教育中广泛建立，但日本音乐领域却是一个特别的异类，自 1960 年代以来成立的大多数乐团最终都已解散。相比之下，其他面临表面上类似挑战的世界音乐团体却蓬勃发展并数量增加，最引人注目的是各种形式的印度尼西亚加麦兰。尽管这似乎是独特的美国因素造成的，但考虑到日本传统音乐在日本本身的边缘地位，表明此类乐团的可持续性问题具有复杂性和多面性。哥伦比亚大学的gagaku / hōgaku该计划为地区研究和音乐部门之间的日本音乐教育合作提供了一个模式。参考 Catherine Grant 和 Huib Schippers 完善的考虑世界音乐可持续性问题的框架，并借鉴在各种背景下教授和观察传统日本音乐教育的丰富经验，对哥伦比亚模型的分析提供了一个新的视角探索日本文化认同及其与制度结构的关系。它还提供了对更广泛的文化兴趣在学生决定学习特定地区或时期音乐的重要性的见解。