Chapter 3. - Playing Changes: Music as Mediator between Japanese and Black Americans

Summary

Abstract

Since the mid-twentieth century, music has played a central role in encounters and interactions between the people of Japan and those of African descent. It proved far more effective for promoting interracial dialogue and understanding than efforts in the early 1900s to foster an alliance against white supremacy and imperialism. This essay unpacks the ways that encounters with Black music transformed Japanese musicking and generated knowledge and empathy for people of African descent among Japanese. Personal interactions between Black and Japanese musicians constituted a process of “grassroots globalization” that circumvented the dominance of American mass media in representing African Americans and their music. Japanese who performed and consumed Black music could understand W. E. B. Du Bois’ concept of “double consciousness,” seeing themselves in the eyes of others and becoming more aware of racial injustice. Afrological music spoke more relevantly to Japanese experience than Eurological music did.

Keywords: Japanese music, Jazz, Black music, Racism, Double consciousness

Since the mid-twentieth century, music has played a central role in encounters and interactions between the people of Japan and those of African descent. Most Japanese exposure to Black people and culture has been through American entertainment media, the effects of which have not always been laudable. But there have also been “grassroots” exchanges between Black musicians and their Japanese counterparts and audiences, and Black music has generated broader curiosity among Japanese about African Americana and the historical contexts and social conditions in which that music was produced. It has inspired empathy for Black people and indignation toward the racist attitudes, structures, and violence they have suffered, endured, and survived. Conversely, the sincere and enthusiastic embrace of their music has endeared Japan to Black American musicians, particularly jazz artists, who from the 1960s increasingly came to rely on international festivals and concert tours as sources of livelihood.

Relationships and perceptions between Black Americans and Japanese have veered from hostility and prejudice to mutual admiration and solidarity against white supremacy. At certain points in history, they identified with each other so strongly that Black Americans referred to Japanese as “our Oriental brothers” and Japanese described themselves as “yellow negroes,” bound by common experiences of enduring white racism.1 African diasporic music has served reliably well as a bridge over the occasionally tumultuous waters of interracial encounters.