Dear colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to inform you about the rebirth of the Kansai Modern Japan Group. The group is a platform for scholars on modern and/or contemporary Japan, residing in or visiting the Kansai area. It convenes on a monthly basis, alternately in Kyoto or Osaka, for a lecture, comments by a discussant, followed by an open discussion (and usually a konshinkai at a local izakaya). In October we organise a special meeting, consisting of several lectures on a specific theme. The 'rules' are simple. The lecture is in English, the comments and discussion either in English or Japanese, all interested are welcome.

For our first meeting we will just continue 'as usual'. David Hopkins of Tenri University (and the man behind Public Bath Records, the label that brought us the best of the Osaka underground during the 1980s) will take up the story on Japanese popular music where he stopped several years ago, namely in the 1930s. In his lecture on wartime popular music he will discuss the content and trends in the hit records of this era, both the miltary songs and the 'civil' songs, with a focus on the images of women (see abstract below). Of course, David will treat us to various vivid examples from his impressive 78rpm record collection.

In order to provide a little more atmosphere to this lively lecture, we will not gather at one of our 'satellite classrooms' but at our shinnenkai venue in Kyoto. For this special event Sakebar Yoramu will turn into something that might slightly resemble one of those postwar gunkoku sakaba, although we will keep out the related ideology and melancholy. This has the extra advantage that after the lecture we will not have to relocate but can stay where we are to enjoy the best of Japan's sake (strictly junmaishu) and an intriguing combination of Kyoto and Middle Eastern cuisine. And, if circumstances allow, there will also be a screening of the 1958 Daiei B-movie 'Gunkoku Sakaba' to give you an impression of what real gunkoku sakaba used to be like.

Here are the data:

SPEAKER: David Hopkins (Tenri University)
TITLE: Kessen musume: Images of Women in Japan's War-era Record Industry
DATE: Wednesday 25 May
TIME: 18:30
PLACE: Sakebar Yoramu, Kyoto - ground floor, on the south side of Nijo-dori, inbetween Higashi no Toin-dori and Ainomachi-dori. It is a 5 minute walk from exit no.1 of the Karasuma Oike subway station. For directions see:
http://www.sakebar-yoramu.com/access_eng.html

Those who are planning to attend, please send a notice to dick.stegewerns@xs4all.nl by Monday 23 May. Those willing to present at one of our monthly meetings, please send an abstract of the presentation you propose to do to this same address.

I look forward to welcoming many familiar and new faces.

Best regards,

Dick Stegewerns
Kyoto University & Oslo University

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ABSTRACT:

Kessen Musume: Images of Women in Japan's War-era Record Industry

Recent scholarship has greatly expanded our understanding of the history of the music of Japan's 15-year war era, but this scholarship hasn't yet applied much lit crit or social psychological methodology to more deeply understand the records in their social context.
With young men gone to the armed forces, the audience for record companies to target was overwhelmingly female. Record companies used several strategies to overcome resistance to consumption of non-essentials, making one type of frivolous consumption not a luxury, but an expression of patriotism. The various traditional roles of women-mother, wife, daughter-all figured prominently in music targeted at the homeland audience. In addition, new roles, such as worker “behind the gun” and even combatant, became more and more common as the war progressed.
There is a clear break in content with the expansion of the war to the Pacific in late 1941. One strong feature of late 1930s music is the feminization of Asian conquests, with all of the sexual possibilities that implies. Ri Ko Ran is only the strongest of many examples. This type of content has little place in the wider arena of the Pacific War, when censorship had become stricter. Similarly, Miss Wakana was a major figure in manzai in the late 1930s、often calling attention to women's issues in a more or less resistant way, only to disappear from record in the 1940s.
In my presentation I will use actual records played on a period phonograph

David Hopkins is an associate professor at Tenri University in Nara.
His recent publications have been about Japanese movies from the 1960s and 1970s, and about public and school libraries' relationship with manga culture. He has a collection of more than 2000 pre-war records.