ISSN 2029-2074
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE
BOY’ – THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN
IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
Sepp Linhart
Head of Department for East Asian Studies, University of Vienna (Austria)
Keywords: image of Japan in the West, geisha image, Russo - Japanese War, Pacific War, Tin Pan
Alley songs, German pop music.
Pagrindinės sąvokos: Japonijos įvaizdis Vakaruose, geišos įvaizdis, Rusijos ir Japonijos karas, Tin
Pan Alley dainos, vokiečių populiarioji muzika.
Introduction
This paper puts forward the hypothesis that especially since the beginning of the twentieth century our image of Japan has been heavily influenced by Western popular music with Japan themes. The overwhelming
importance of popular music became evident especially since the spread
of the gramophone and the talkie or sound film. Since the beginning of
the twentieth century up to the present time popular music always appeared together with visual images, so that the influence is not restricted
to what we are hearing over and over again, but is reinforced through
pictures. In spite of this tremendous impact on our perception the importance of popular music for the formation of our image of Japan during the
last more than hundred years has hardly ever become the object of serious
research with the exception of some outstanding works such as the opera
Madama Butterfly.
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SEPP LINHART
The Development of Light Western Music with Japanese
Themes
The first traces of Japanese motives in Western music go back as far as
the 17th century. Called Japanesenspiele in German, the Jesuits produced
a number of plays about the Christian martyrs of Japan. They contained
some songs about Japan, in which only little exoticism can be found. After
the opening of Japan by the US, some Westerners, who came to Yokohama
or Nagasaki, remembered simple Japanese songs, but this did not have any
impact on Western music. During the Meiji period, though, some Western
music specialists worked as oyatoi gaikokujin in Japan and began to compose music about Japan. One example is the Austrian Rudolf Dittrich, who
from 1888 to 1894 was employed as director of the Tokyo Music Academy.
After his wife’s death, Dittrich stayed together with a geisha and probably
was taught several Japanese songs by her. His Japanese compositions include Tayori (choir), Tekona (march), Yoi (march), Nippon Gakufu (6 Japanese
folksongs), Nippon Gakufu 2 (10 Japanese folksongs), Rakubai (Japanese
song), Two Old Classic Chinese Dance Melodies: Konju raku and Butoku
raku, i. e. gagaku pieces, as well as a Hymn on the Declaration of the Constitution (Suchy 1990, p. 119), since this event took place when Dittrich stayed
in Japan. Although his Japanese folksongs were arranged in Western style
for piano and published in Europe, I doubt whether they had much influence on the Western image of Japan.
The first Western musical piece which left a profound impact was without any doubt the British opera The Mikado or The Town of Titipu (1885)
by the composer Arthur Sullivan and the librettist W. S. Gilbert, a satire on
British politics and society in a Japanese custom. Although the satire was
hardly understood in non-English-speaking countries this opera became a
world success, and is frequently performed until today. One of the songs in
this opera, ‘Miyasama’, is a genuine Japanese song, namely ‘Tokoton yare’,
a titillating soldiers’ song composed in the early years of the Meiji period
by Ōmura Yasujirō with words by Shinagawa Yajirō (Bradley 2003: 618).
All the other music in The Mikado is not about Japan. Similar remarks can
be made about the operetta The Geisha. A Story of a Teahouse (1896) by
Sydney Jones, Owen Hall, and Harry Greenbank which was at least as successful as The Mikado. Apart from the title person and the song ‘Chon Kina’,
a genuine Japanese song from a rather infamous milieu (Linhart 1992), this
operetta which has been called the first British musical, does not tell us
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
much about Japan. But together with Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama
Butterfly (1904) these three musical stage works created the basis for a huge
number of ‘pop’ songs about Japan. Madama Butterfly became the most
often performed opera in the US until today, and it was made into a silent
movie as early as 1915 and into many sound films afterwards. Given these
facts, we can include this opera into popular culture, even though it is of
course a part of high culture, too.
When Puccini wrote his opera, he was among others influenced by the
dancer and actress Sada Yacco, who toured Europe and Northern America
in company with her husband Kawakami Otojirō between 1899 and 1902
with an enormous success (Pantzer 2005). Another successful Japanese actress was Hanako, who performed in Europe and Northern America between 1901 and 1922, for more than twenty years (Lee 1981; Sawada 1984).
Besides many Japanese troupes of vaudeville and other artists also toured
the West, but are today completely forgotten. They all contributed to create
an image of Japan that was to be reflected in the many popular songs about
Japan which appeared in the first half of the twentieth century.
The two musical stage works The Geisha, and Madama Butterfly, and
the two Japanese performers Sada Yacco and Hanako, geishas by profession before they started their careers in Europe and the US, were highly
instrumental in creating the popular image of the Japanese woman as being
a geisha. Being a geisha meant to be a beautiful, sensuous Asian woman
wearing a kimono, whose main purpose in life consisted in serving a man
in any possible way, a woman who never became a danger or a challenge for
a man, a woman who was born to endure everything a man could do her
wrong without ever complaining about her fate.
Western songs about Japan 1900-1944
At the beginning of the twentieth century, music was still mainly live
music as it had been all the time since men started to sing. Live musicians
performed songs in cafés and restaurants, in film theatres and on street
corners, and people arranged private meetings to make music at home. In
order to enable people to perform music themselves that they had heard on
any of these occasions, publishers offered the professional and the amateur
musicians alike sheet music, as soon as it had become a fashion that composers wrote single songs. Oriental songs, songs that treat oriental themes,
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SEPP LINHART
are an important subcategory of the so called Tin Pan Alley songs1, the
American pop music of the first half of the twentieth century, and Japanese
songs make up one important subcategory of the Oriental songs2.
Sheet music usually consisted of four to six pages. The first page was
an eye-catcher through which consumers were to be persuaded to buy this
musical piece. Therefore many talented designers were active in this business and created beautiful and sometimes innovative title pages. The music was usually for voice and piano. For professionals the songs were also
published as arrangements for so called saloon orchestras, small groups of
musicians, as they often performed in restaurants and similar places.
I tried to find as many popular songs with Japan themes from 1900
to 1944 as possible and ended up with 130 songs from Northern America
and European countries in my collection on which the following analysis is
based. It has to be said, that there existed already a lively exchange of popular music between the continents at this time, and songs which turned out
to be successful were exported from the US to Europe and also the other
way round. Most of the songs in my corpus are American songs, while
a minority is from Germany and Austria, and only very few from other
countries.
The first conspicuous phenomenon is that there appeared quite a number of songs which supported the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese
War, songs with titles such as ‘The Jap behind the gun’ (1904), a march and
two step by A. E. Wade, ‘The little brown man of Japan’ (1904) by William
H. Penn and Georg Totten Smith, ‘The little Jap’ (1904), a characteristic two
step by Percy Wenrich, ‘Little Fighting Soldier Man’ (1905) by Lilian Coffin
or (Prince Fushimi’s song) ‘A soldier of old Japan’ (1905) by Richard C. Dillmore. All these songs are anti-Russian and pro-Japanese, as if they were
made for the Japanese immigrants who concentrated on the West coast, but
they were all published on the East coast.
After the Russo-Japanese War this positive attitude towards Japan continued in the popular songs, even though around 1906 and 1907 there were
rumours that Japan and the US were going to war because of their conflict
1
2
Tin Pan Alley was an expression for a district in a city in which the music publishers were
concentrated. In New York City, this was on West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue.
Tin Pan Alley songs were published as sheet music at least until the 1930s, or according to other
opinions until the 1950s.
An interesting overview of Oriental Tin Pan Alley songs can be found in the January 2003 issue
of Parlor Songs on the website: http://www.parlorsongs.com/issues/2003-1/thismonth/feature.
php.
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
of interest in East Asia. The other problem which the Japanese constituted
for the Americans was that of the overambitious and over-diligent Japanese
immigrants to the West coast, and I found one song, ‘Look out California
beware!’ (1916) by Edith Malda Lessing3 which is as racist as one can think
of. But generally, such songs are the exceptions to the rule. As soon as the
Russo-Japanese War was over, the Japan song scene was dominated by ‘geisha songs’, sheet music with a beautiful fantasy geisha on the tile page as an
eye-catcher. The contents of these geisha songs by and large correspond to
the geisha image of Japan, as we have seen above. Since there are so many of
these songs, I introduce only two examples:
Example 1: ‘Lotus San’ (1908), music by Dolly Jardon and lyrics by Edward Madden
Far in old Japan/ lived sweet Lotus San/ eyes a-shining,/ heart a-pining/ for a
soldier man.
From across the sea/ handsome as could be/ came a-suing/ gently wooing,/ bold
American.
And when she’d serve him tea,/ beneath the cherry tree,/ her laugh would ring/
whene’er he’d sing/ so tenderly.
/Chorus:/ Sweet little Geisha maid,/ Why are you so afraid?/ Tell me what magic
lies/ hidden in your almond eyes?
Don’t hide behind your fan/ Sweet maid of old Japan./ Time is flying,/ love is
sighing,/ pretty little Lotus San.
This song is a love song about a Japanese girl and an American soldier.
What is interesting for the geisha image are the attributes assigned to the
Japanese girl by the name of Lotus San. She is called a geisha maid, is sweet,
is pretty, has shining eyes, has a magic in her almond eyes, is laughing tenderly, is hiding behind her fan, serves him tea. This is a stereotypical idealized image of young Japanese women which can be found in many similar
songs.
Example 2: ‘When It’s Moonlight In Tokio’ (1917), music by Charles P. Shisler & Billy James,
lyrics by Bobby Heath
Dear old Japan I hear you calling me,/ Tho’ I am far away;/ I dream of you and
think about you, too,/ Thru all the night and day.
I have spent my time in many lands,/ I’ve seen beauty ev’rywhere,/ But Tokio,
when bathed in moonlight’s glow,/ Is beauty sweet and rare.
3
Published in the American Magazine Section of the Chicago Examiner, Sunday, July 23, 1916.
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SEPP LINHART
/Chorus:/ When it’s moonlight in Tokio,/ ‘Mid the flowers,/ When the lanterns
are burning low,/ Happy hours!/ Ev’ry girlie in old Japan/ Finds she’s loving
some Jappy man,/ Sings while holding his little hand:/ “Hully up, hully up,
I’m waiting.”/ Down thru Japanese Lovers’ Lane/ They are strolling,/ Each boy
humming the same refrain:/ “My Butterfly, I love but you,/ Tell me you love me
true,”/ When it’s moonlight in Tokio!
In contrast to example 1, ‘When it’s moonlight in Tokio’ is more about
the atmosphere in the ‘paradise’ Japan. Here Japan itself is sweet, especially
in the moonlight. Moonlight, flowers, and lanterns are the attributes of Japan, which is sweet, rare, and far away. Because it is far away, it has to be
exotic, and the Japanese girls who are likened to butterflies speak funny
English and pronounce ‘r’s like ‘l’s. We can even say that in this song Japan
itself as a country becomes a kind of ‘geisha’.
Songs like the two mentioned ones abound, but there are also other
songs, which treat Japan with sympathy but without exaggerated exoticism,
like ‘The Japanese sandman’ (1920), before the war the most famous song
about Japan. It became immediately a jazz standard tune and was part of the
repertory of Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw,
and Django Reinhardt among others.
I tried to put all the 130 songs about Japan published between 1900 and
1944 into the three categories ‘love songs’, ‘military songs’ and ‘other songs’
and grouped them into 5-years-groups. The results are hardly surprising:
Table 1: Western* songs about Japan, 1900 to 1944
Period
Love songs
Military songs
Others
Sum
1900-04
17
4
6
27
1905-09
8
4
4
16
1910-14
1915-19
1920-24
4
26
10
1
2
0
3
3
13
8
31
23
1925-29
1930-34
1935-39
7
2
0
0
2
0
5
0
2
12
4
2
1940-44
Sum
0
74
6
19
1
37
7
130
* These songs were published in the US, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Australia, Argentina
and Peru. 80% are from the United States, though.
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
57 % of all songs were love songs, but 14 % were military songs. Most of the
‘love songs’ are ‘geisha songs’, songs in which the word ‘geisha’ is mentioned
explicitly or which are songs about a young beautiful Japanese woman that
a Westerner would call a ‘geisha’.
One important clue to decide whether a song is a ‘geisha song’ or not,
is the picture on the cover page of the sheet music. I therefore also made an
analysis of the covers of the 130 songs in my corpus, the results of which
are given in table 2. Again, the results are not surprising. 52 % of all covers show a woman which in the West would most likely be called a ‘geisha’.
The other codes assigned to Japan are also not astonishing at all with the
exception of the poppy. It seems that today Japan is no longer associated
with poppy flowers, but eighty or ninety years ago it obviously was. It might
be that the memory of the opium wars that took place in the Far East was
instrumental in creating this false impression of Japan being a county of
poppy flowers.
Perhaps we should also have a look on names in these songs. Tokio
or Tokyo is mentioned seven times, and Yokohama four times, while no
other place names appear. Tokyo and Yokohama in the first half of the
20th century were obviously the most famous cities of Japan for the West.
The variety of women’s names is much greater. Put into alphabetical order
they are: Chu-Chu-San (published in 1919), Fu-Ji (1919), Hanako (1909),
Kakuda (1914), Karama (1904), Li-Ho-San (1919), Lotus-san (1908),
Mi-Mo-San (1915), Mi-Mo-San (1925), Mi Mo San (1917), Miss Suzuki
(1920), San Yan (1919), Suki San (1917), Ti-O-San (1920), Whoa San
(1903), Yo-san (1903), Yo San (1904), Yo-San (1919), and Yuschi (1920).
Table 2: The most frequent visual codes for Japan on Western sheet music covers, 1900-44
(130 songs)
Percentage
Frequency and Code
More than 50%
More than 15%
More than 10%
(67) ‘geisha’
(24) lantern, lampion, (22) fan, (20) Mt. Fuji, (19) water
(16) cherry blossoms, (14) temple, (13) pine trees, (13) Hinomaru flag
or sun
More than 5%
(11) Jap. umbrella, (9) torii, (8) round bridge, (8) chrysanthemum, (8)
poppy, (8) man, (7) woman, (7) iris, (7) building, (7) tea tableware
(6) soldier, (6) gun, (6) lotus flower, (6) flower vase, (6) moon, (5) sailing boat, (4) children, (4) samurai, (4) crane
More than 3%
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SEPP LINHART
Some of these names sound more Chinese than Japanese, and some do
not conform with Japanese phonemics, but this is the freedom typical for
popular music, which does not have to be authentic, neither in its symbols
nor in the facts.
The military songs flourished from 1900 to 1909, or more exactly between 1904 and 1905 at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, and again during the Pacific War from 1941 to 1944. The songs from the Pacific War were
of course totally different from the mentioned Russo-Japanese War songs.
In contrast to Japanese war songs which stressed the purity of the Japanese
soldiers, American war songs condemned the ugly enemy. Put into images,
Japan, the ‘lovely geisha’, after the Pearl Harbor attack was immediately replaced by Japan, the yellow peril. On the covers of the war time sheet music,
the Japanese enemy was drawn as a little ugly yellow man, and the song
titles are most revealing: ‘Get your gun and come along, we’re fixin’ to kill
a skunk’ (1941); ‘Good-bye Mama, I’m Off To Yokohama’ (1941); ‘There’ll
be a little smokio In Tokio’ (1941); ‘You’re a sap, mister Jap’ (1941); ‘We’re
gonna have to slap the dirty little Jap and Uncle Sam’s the guy who can do it’
(1941), ‘Bomb Tokyo!’ (1942), ‘Cowards over Pearl Harbor’ (1942), ‘‘Here
I go to Tokio’, said Barnacle Bill, the sailor’ (1942), ‘It’s a K.O. for Tokyo’
(1942), ‘It’s taps for the Japs’ (1942), ‘The cranky old Yank in a clanky old
tank’ (1942), ‘We’ve got to do a job on the Japs, baby’ (1942), ‘Johnny Zero’
(1943), ‘The rising sun has gone down for all time’ (1945)4. Other titles of
songs for which I do not have more information, are ‘Let’s take a rap at
the Japs’, ‘Oh, you little son of an Oriental’, ‘When those little yellow bellies
meet the Cohens and the Kellys’, and ‘We’re going to find a fellow who is
yellow and beat him red, white and blue’, and ‘The Japs haven’t got a Chinaman’s chance’, which was renamed ‘The Japs haven’t got a ghost of a chance’
(American Attitudes 2008), because the expression ‘Chinaman’s chance’
was no longer politically correct towards the ally China.
While these American songs are full of hatred and contempt for the
Japanese who in the songs were compared to monkeys, rats, snakes, skunks
and other animals, one might expect that in Germany during the Second
World War songs which carried a positive image of Japan would appear,
since Germany and Japan were allies, but I did not come across a single
German song about Japan published during the war. The last German songs
with a Japan theme were ‘Sonne über Japan’ (Sun above Japan) and ‘Kleiner
4
Many of these songs can be heard on the website American Attitudes 2008.
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
japanischer Schmetterling’ (Little Japanese butterfly), both from 1934. It
might be that the Japanese embassy in Berlin intervened against ‘geisha’
songs, and that songs about the Japanese soldiers’ bravery were equally not
welcomed by the German authorities for whom the German soldier had to
be the bravest in the world.
Songs about Japan in Germany and Austria after 1945
During the first years after World War II, there were no songs about
Japan, neither in the US nor in Europe. The fascination of Japan had disappeared, both as a country of lovely ‘geishas’ and as a country of brave
warriors. Although the US started already in 1947 to build up Japan as a
capitalist stronghold against communist China, the hatred against Japan in
American heads was too outspoken to allow light music to be composed
about Japan as before the war. In Germany, fear of contact with the former
ally Japan was dominant. A positive attitude towards Japan might have been
mistaken as a sign of Nazism.
After the American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, Japan gradually became a full member of international society again. In October 1956
the Soviet Union and Japan issued a joint declaration about the restoration
of relations, and in December 1956 Japan became a member of the United
Nations. At the time of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo 1964, Japan had regained its former status as one of the world’s leading nations. This renewed
status was an important precondition for the Western popular culture’s new
concern with Japan.
In this chapter I will concentrate on Japan in the popular music of Germany and Austria, because after the mentioned interruption of the treatment of Japan themes in Western popular culture following the Pacific War
there appeared so much on Japan in almost every Western country that an
analysis of the whole ‘West’ became impossible. On the other hand, German popular culture is much easier for me to analyse because I grew up in
this milieu and under the influence of it.
The one work which broke the ice between Japan and the West in Western popular culture was the film Sayonara (1957) with Marlon Brando and
Miiko Taka as American-Japanese lovers fighting against a world of prejudices and misunderstanding. This successful movie which was awarded
several Golden Globes contained also a song with the same title, composed
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SEPP LINHART
by the famous Irving Berlin and sung by the Japanese female jazz singer
Nancy/Miyoshi Umeki5, the first Oriental to receive a Golden Globe. The
song with the lyrics ‘Sayonara,/ Japanese goodbye,/ whisper sayonara,/ but
you must not cry!’ became a great success like the film. But there existed already another ‘Sayonara’-song from 1955, which starts with the lyrics, ‘The
time has come for us to say Sayonara./ My heart will always be yours for
eternity’. This song was composed by Hasegawa and Yoshida6, while the
lyrics are by Freddy Morgan. In Germany this song proved to be a much
greater success than the Irving Berlin song, and this might have to do with
its performance. It was produced in 1957, probably after the successful film,
with a German translation spoken by the British Chris Howland over the
English original song. Whereas today, with a majority of German songs
produced in English, this record sounds really funny, for the audience in
1957, which was still mainly used to hear German songs, this half English,
half German version of ‘Sayonara’ was much more welcomed than a song in
English only and became a great hit. ‘Sayonara’ is not a straightforward ‘geisha’ song, but it conveys the bitter-sweet atmosphere of a love affair between
a Westerner and a Japanese woman which cannot last for long.
Another song which paved the way for more songs with a Japanese
theme was sung by Austrian sports’ superhero Toni Sailer, the winner of 7
alpine skiing gold medals in the 1956 Winter Olympics and the 1958 world
championships. Toni Sailer, who after his successes in sports entered a second career as singer and movie actor, enjoyed a special popularity in Japan
and even acted in the Japanese ski film Ginrei no ōja (The King of the Silver
Mountains) in 1960. One of his German songs ‘Am Fudschijama blüht kein
Edelweiss’ (No Edelweiss is blossoming on the Fujiyama) is about Japan,
and it is again a ‘geisha’ song. The singer pretends that he left Japan, even
though a beautiful ‘geisha’ asked him to stay. It is quite clear that ‘geisha’ in
this song’s context means only a beautiful Japanese woman, and not a real
geisha.
With Toni Sailer’s song all of a sudden the ‘geisha’ songs returned
to German popular music after a twenty-five years’ long absence. Table
3 gives an (incomplete) overview of the Japan songs which appeared in
Germany between 1960 and 1975 and it shows clearly that the Tokyo
5
6
Some people say that this song was sung by Miiko Taka in the film.
It is often stated that the music is by Hasegawa Yoshida, but since both names are family names
rather than first names I suppose it was done by two people jointly. I could not yet find out,
though, who Hasegawa and Yoshida are, whether they are Japanese or Japanese Americans.
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
Olympics were instrumental in bringing forward a small Japan boom
in Germany’s popular music. Immediately after World War II, German
popular music was dominated by songs about Italy. This boom changed
into a boom of songs about Hawaii and the South Seas, and in the sixties into a comparatively small Japan boom. The most conspicuous year
in this respect was 1963, the year before the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The factors which were mainly connected with this boom apart from the
Olympics, were the appearance of two very successful songs about Japan,
‘Mitsou’ and ‘Sukiyaki’, as well as the activities of a Japanese singer duo,
The Peanuts, in Germany.
‘Mitsou’ appeared in the top 20 hits of the German charts in July 1963
and kept this position until December for half a year (Tolksdorf). Sung by
the young French singer Jaqueline Boyer who had won the Eurovision’s
Grand Prix in 1960, ‘Mitsou’ is a song full of stereotypes about Japan and an
Table 3. German songs with a Japan theme 1960 to 1975
Year
1960
1962
1963
1963
1963
1963
1964
1964
1964
1965
1965
1967
1967
1968
1972
1973
1975
Song title
Am Fudschijama blüht kein Edelweiss (No Edelweiss is blossoming on the Fujiyama)
Geisha Twist
Mitsou
Kimono aus Tokio (Kimono from Tokyo)
Sukiyaki
Yokohama Baby
Tokio-Geisha
Souvenirs aus Tokio (Souvenirs from Tokyo)
Happy Yokohama
Nagasaki-Boy
Butterfly
Bye, Bye Yokohama
Fudschijama Moon
Der Mond vom Fudschijama (Fujiyama Moon)
Osaka
Ich komm’ wieder kleine Geisha (I‘ll come again,
little geisha)
Sayonara Butterfly
Artist
Toni Sailer
Yvonne Carré
Jaqueline Boyer, Arite Mann
Arite Mann
Blue Diamonds, Yvonne
Carré
Thomas Fritsch
Blue Diamonds
The Peanuts
The Peanuts
The Peanuts
Jaqueline Boyer
The Peanuts
The Peanuts
Jaqueline Boyer
Jürgen Drews
Jean Claude
Ingolf Janson
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example par excellence for a ‘geisha’ song, although it does not contain the
word ‘geisha’. The lyrics of the song are very simple:
Es war am Fudschijama, im Kirschenparadies [It was near the Fujiyama in
the cherry paradise],/ Er war aus Yokohama und fand sie einfach süß [He was
from Yokohama and thought her to be sweet!]!/ Mitsou; Mitsou, Mitsou! Mein
ganzes Glück bist du [Mitsou, Mitsou, Mitsou, you are all my happiness]!/ Den
Kimono trägt keine so schick wie du alleine [No woman wears the kimono as
elegantly as you do]!/ Mitsou, Mitsou, Mitsou! Was sagst denn du dazu [Mitsou,
Mitsou, Mitsou, What do you say]?/ Ich weiß was für uns beide, das wär so
schön, Mitsou [I know something for the both of us that would be wonderful,
Mitsou!]/ Heute abend ist Laternenfest [Tonight there is the lantern festival], wo
sich manches gut bereden lässt! [A good opportunity for talking things over]/
Wenn der Mond scheint in der Lotoszeit [When the moon is shining at the lotus
time], ist die Liebe nicht mehr weit [love is not far away]!
The lyrics of this song contain 45 nouns, 21 times the name Mitsou, and
11 Japan specific words like the proper names Fujiyama, and Yokohama, as
well as cherry blossom time, cherry paradise, kimono, lampion, lantern,
lantern festival, lotus time and silk. Compared to these 32 ‘Japan nouns’,
the song contains only 13 ‘neutral nouns’. The song was so successful in
the Federal Republic of Germany that the German Democratic Republic
recorded its own slightly different version sung by Arite Mann.
One remarkable feature of this hit song is its title. As we have seen it
was very common with American songs to give them a woman’s (fantasy)
name as their title, but in Germany ‘Mitsou’ is an exception. I found only
one other Japan song, ‘Miss Suzuki’ (1920), which also has a proper name as
its title, although this is a family name. Mitsou could be the Japanese name
Mitsu, but in the song the accent is put on the second syllable which makes
it sound quite differently, as if the final vowel were a long vowel. On the other hand, the titles of the 17 songs in the table frequently contain Japanese
place names to mark them as Japan songs. Fujiyama, Tokyo, and Yokohama
each are used three times, and Nagasaki and Osaka one time each. Titles
without place or proper names include the Japanese words geisha (three
times), kimono, sayonara and sukiyaki (one time each). Two titles contain
the word butterfly, which by many Westeners is at once associated with Japanese women or geisha, since the tie of a sash (obi) looks like the wings of a
butterfly and because of the opera Madama Butterfly. Not a single song has
‘Japan’ or ‘Japanese’ in its title, only code words which stand for Japan.
‘Mitsou’ stayed for six months among the top 20 hits of the charts, but
its best result was place no. 8 for two months. ‘Sukiyaki’, on the other hand,
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
went as high as no. 2, but it could keep its position among the top 20 hits
only for four months (Tolksdorf). Both songs reached their highest ranking in September 1963. ‘Sukiyaki’ is of course nothing else than the song
‘Ue o muite’ (Looking up) which was distributed in the US as ‘Sukiyaki
song’, a genuine Japanese song which became a world hit. It is said that 13
million copies of this song were sold internationally and that it was covered by dozens of singers all over the world. The first version of this song
was recorded by Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen in 1963. Since it was assumed
that the original title ‘Ue o muite’ would be too difficult for Westerners, the
title was changed into ‘Sukiyaki song’, because sukiyaki at that time was the
most popular Japanese dish in the West. After the initial success, Capitol
Records and His Master’s Voice released the original song in Japanese sung
by Sakamoto Kyū, but retained the new title ‘Sukiyaki song’. In the Cash Box
charts of top singles, Sakamoto gained the number one position for four
consecutive weeks from June 15 to July 6 (Cash Box), a position never to
be regained again by any Japanese artist. Because of the American success,
the Sakamoto original Japanese version was also distributed in Germany,
but there the song became only successful when it was sung in German by
the Blue Diamonds.
The Blue Diamonds were a pair of Dutch brothers of Indonesian origin, who had become famous with their version of the evergreen ‘Ramona’.
It seems that the producers of the German version of ‘Sukiyaki’ selected
these singers because of their Asian look, which probably was thought to
give the song a more authentic Japanese flavour. While the ‘Sukiyaki song’
was distributed as an instrumental version and in its original Japanese version in Great Britain and in the US, in Germany it was immediately turned
into a ‘geisha song’. The German lyrics sing of the most beautiful woman in
the world, with whom the protagonist ate a wonderful sukiyaki dinner in
Nagasaki (for the sake of the rhyme). The wonderful woman by the name
Tamiko, probably inspired by the 1962 John Sturges film A Girl Named Tamiko, invites the hero into her house amidst a flower garden, but when he
returns some time later, she is gone. It should be noted that neither the Japanese original nor the English versions by A Taste of Honey (1981) or 4 P. M.
(1995), which also reached the top ten in the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart
contained any exotic Japanese flavour, which was apparently still deemed
necessary in Germany during the sixties.
The same tendency to make music more exotic can also be found in
the songs by the Japanese duo The Peanuts (Za Piinattsu) who were ac-
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tive in Germany between 1964 and 1967. Although two of their songs
happened to make their way into the German charts, the twins who were
rather well-known in Japan were not really successful with their songs in
Germany, but they contributed greatly to strengthen the ‘geisha image’ of
Japanese women. Appearing on many TV shows in miniskirts as well as
in kimonos, their image was that of ‘modernized geishas’. It must not be
overlooked, though, that their activities in Germany can be summed up
under the phrase of self-orientalization.
To sum up this period, we can say that Japan songs started with the sentimental song Sayonara which brought Japan much sympathy and which set
the tone for the songs to come. Almost all songs appearing after ‘Sayonara’
were songs about the love between a Western man and a Japanese ‘geisha’.
They usually were slow, quiet, kitschy, tawdry, and full of false emotions,
and they presented an image of Japan as that of a ‘good old world’. Basically
in these songs there is no difference to the songs from the first three decades
of the 20th century: Japan is the lost paradise beyond the sea, the land of
our longings, in which the most beautiful and most endearing females in
this world, the submissive ‘geisha’, live.
The change around 1980
While the image of Japan in Western popular music did not change for
a long time, Japan gained a new position in the world. In 1968 the Japanese
GNP became the second largest of all capitalist countries, and during the
seventies the Japanese economy grew stronger in spite of the Nixon shock
of 1972 and the oil shock of 1973. Suddenly Japanese management methods were highly evaluated in the West and Japan became a kind of new
economic model. These developments of course also had repercussions
in popular music and the old-fashioned ‘geisha image’ was replaced by a
new image that can be seen in three megahits with Japan themes which
appeared around 1980, and which no longer corresponded to the hitherto
exotic image of Japan.
In the beginning of 1980, the short-lived British new wave guitar group
The Vapors issued ‘Turning Japanese’ as their second single, which reached
number three in the UK single charts and became widely known internationally. The song is not really about Japan, but the refrain ‘I think I’m
turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so’ remained
strongly in the ears of every listeners. This was at the time when all Europe-
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
ans and Americans looked to Japan as to whether they could imitate something from Japan, and therefore the song was really a timely piece.
One year later, in August 1981, the Scottish folk singer Aneka even
climbed to number one in the British single charts with her song ‘My Japanese Boy’. This song became also a number one hit in Sweden and Switzerland, number three in Germany and number four in Austria, while in the
US its highest rank was number 15. The remarkable thing about this song
is the fact that it tells the Madama Butterfly-story the other way round: A
Western girl is left by her Japanese lover and she longs for him. For almost
a century the story had been about a Japanese woman discarded by her
Western male lover, who as a good submissive ‘geisha’ accepted her tragic
fate. The Aneka song gets along without a victimized ‘geisha’, the victim
now being a Western woman. It is certainly no error to interpret this song
as a symbol of changed power relations between Japan and the West. The
Japanese boy is the strong winner who went away without caring for the
poor Western girl. Like ‘Turning Japanese’, ‘My Japanese Boy’ does not
contain any Japanese or oriental codes, and this holds also true for the
third song in this group.
In 1984 the German synthpop band Alphaville had a tremendous success with ‘Big in Japan’, which reached the number 1 position in Germany,
Switzerland, Sweden, and in the US dance charts, number 3 in Norway,
number 4 in Austria, number 5 in the Netherlands, and number 13 in
France. The title for this song was taken from a not at all important British punk band, active in 1977/78 only. Without explanations the lyrics are
hardly understandable, but according to the band members it is a song
about a pair of lovers who wants to get rid of heroin (Alphaville). As such
it has of course nothing to do with Japan, and it is not exotic at all, but the
refrain “Things are easy, when you’re big in Japan, when you’re big in Japan”
expresses a certain longing for Japan. In 1984, when everybody hummed
this song, Japan was on the peak of its economic success, and it is doubtful whether this song would have become successful if ‘Japan’ had been
replaced by any other country’s name.
It is difficult to say which songs were more successful, ‘Mitsou’ and ‘Sukiyaki’ from 1963 or the three mentioned songs from the beginning of the
eighties, but without any doubt these five songs were the most widely known
songs connected with Japan, even if some of them did not really have much
to do with Japan, as is the case with ‘Turning Japanese’ and ‘Big in Japan’.
Interestingly, the great hit songs from the eighties refrain from any exotic
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garnishment, even though the videos accompanying the songs are full of it.
Japan in the eighties is no longer an exotic wonderland, it has become an economic wonderland, and the image in the Western popular songs changed accordingly.
The image of Japan in present day German popular music
While at the present there is no German pop hit song about Japan,
popular enough as to be compared to the three mentioned songs from the
eighties, there is reason to believe that an imagined Japan still plays an important role in Germany’s popular music world. I would like to enumerate
a few examples as proof for this statement.
In 2006 the Japanese girl group Vivace started another career in Germany under the name of Shanadoo, an undertaking similar to that of The
Peanuts in the 1960ies. The four pretty girls sing their songs in English,
in mixed English and Japanese or in Japanese only, and their repertoire of
songs includes Germany produced Japanese songs like ‘Konnichi wa’ or
‘Sayonara iro wa blue’, ‘Japan’ songs like ‘My Samurai’, ‘Ninja Tatoo’ or the
evergreen ‘My Japanese boy’, Asia songs like ‘Fly me to Shanghai’, or international pop music like ‘King Kong’, but not a single German song. That
means that this group which in Japan is only singing commercials’ songs
but is not active as a pop group, is working in Germany as an international
group singing songs in English or in Japanese, and it is accepted as such by
the German audience.
Rollergirl, a German pop singer who is performing on roller skates, in
2002 recorded the song ‘Geisha dreams’, the title of which reminds one of
the classical ‘geisha’ songs, but it is a quick beat disco song, and not at all a
sentimental love song. The song shows sympathy with the assumed dreary
life of geishas in Tokyo who have to serve and to be nice to men whom they
do not love: ‘Perfect body and perfect smile/ An illusion for a while/ Born
to love and trained to please/ And paid to put your mind at ease/ But don´t
you see, but don´t you feel that love is free?/ Refrain/ Ichi-gi ichi-go/ All
alone in Tokyo/ Don´t you see? Don´t you know?/ They got nowhere else
to go/ Ichi-gi, ichi-go/ Far away from Tokyo’.
Another remarkable singer is Bushido, a so-called gangsta rapper. He
does not rap about Japan, but he got fascinated with bushidō when he once
FROM ‘THE GEISHA’ TO ‘MY JAPANESE BOY’ - THE CHANGING IMAGE OF JAPAN IN WESTERN POPULAR MUSIC
heard about it and thus he chose to make Bushido his artist name. The son of
a Tunisian immigrant to Germany and a German mother, who has a shaved
head and wears fantasy kanji tatoos, is singing rightist songs and is one of
the most controversial persons in the German popular music scene. Since
he postulates that Bushido is the name which fits him best, the inference
can be made that for the average German Japanese bushidō is what Bushido
says in his statements or in his songs. Bushido is said to be anti-Jewish, antiAmerican, anti-homosexual, islamistic, and male chauvinist, and his songs
are officially labeled as harmful to minors. Thus, Anis Mohamed Youssef
Ferchichi, who calls himself Bushido, by using this name, evokes also negative images of Japan. Bushido, who started his career around 2000, has up
to now two no.1 albums in the German charts, and since 2004 he had about
twenty singles in the German charts, which means that he is presently one
of the really big people in German pop music.
Finally, mention has to be made of a boys’ group with the name Tokio
Hotel, the most successful German group over the last years. Tokio Hotel
is a teenager band which was formed in 2003 with 14 to 15 year old boys,
and became immediately a great success. It received the MTV Europe Music Award 2008 in the category Headliner, i.e. for the most impressive live
band of the year. From 2005 onwards, the band had four no. 1 singles in
the German charts and it is now widely known all over Europe as well as in
North and South America. The remarkable thing about this group is their
appearance: they, and especially their lead singer Bill Kaulitz, look like people who just walked out of a manga. There are speculations that the band
was formed with this outfit in order to attract manga fans. Moreover, they
are said to imitate J-Pop and especially the Visual-Kei scene. What is also
interesting is the rather unusual band name Tokio Hotel. The explanations
for this name by group members themselves are not very convincing. Hotel
is taken from the fact that they spend a lot of their time in hotels, and Tokio
was chosen because Tokyo is the most glittering city in the world. In any
case, it is an absolutely new phenomenon that top artists like Bushido and
Tokio Hotel make a reference to Japan in their names.
Perhaps one might think that this has nothing to do with the Japanese image in Western pop music, but on the other hand we can assume
that these trends express a total renunciation of the long dominating ‘geisha songs’ and correspond to a new image of Japan which is already in the
heads of the young people all over Europe.
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Conclusion
The globalization in the second half of the 19th century with the forced
opening of Japan led to the production of numerous songs about Japan in
the first half of the 20th century. These songs express nostalgia for a ‘good
old world’, for a paradise beyond the ocean with the main actors there being
beautiful young women in kimonos, who do everything for men. During
the years before and amid WWII there was an interruption, and in the US
many anti-Japanese military songs were produced instead of kitschy ‘geisha
songs’.
From 1960 onwards a continuation of the old trend can be noted, but
from around 1980 new tendencies can be detected. While at the one hand
there still is a continuation of the traditional Japan image in the form of
‘geisha songs’, which are no longer popular, though, on the other hand there
can be noted a discarding of old symbols and codes for Japan, as well as
a complete abandonment of Japanese decorations in the music, so typical
for the older pop music. Instead, a search for new themes is conspicuous,
which does not stop at the themes of the songs, but also relates to the names
of groups and their appearance. The most suitable explanation for these
tendencies is that Japan during the past thirty years and with its economic
success became quite a ‘normal’ country like all the other countries for the
people in the West. Another explanation would be that the Western Japan
songs became globalized, but at the same time Japanese popular culture is
now also influencing the Western pop world, so that the biased images of
the past are no longer necessary.
Bibliography
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January 20, 2009.
American Attitudes. 2008. American Attitudes Toward The Japanese Part 2: Pearl Harbor
in Music. In The Authentics History Center: Primary Sources from American Popular
Culture. http://www.authentichistory.com/ww2/music/PHattitudes.html. Accessed
January 31, 2009.
Bradley, Ian (ed.). 2005. The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Cash Box Top Singles 1963 (no year indicated). http://cashboxmagazine.com/archives/60s_
files/1963.html. Accessed January 19, 2009.
Lee, Sang-Kyong. 1981. Hanako. Eine Karriere vor dem Hintergrund des ‘Japan-Kults’ in
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Europa. In Alexander Slawik and Sepp Linhart (eds.) Die Japanerin in Vergangenheit
und Gegenwart. Wien: Institut für Japanologie (=Beiträge zur Japanologie 17), p. 47-59.
Pantzer, Peter (ed.). 2005. Japanischer Theaterhimmel über Europas Bühnen. Kawakami
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1901/1902. München: Iudicium.
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Sawada Suketaro. 1984. Little Hanako. The Strange Story of Rodin’s Only Japanese Model.
Nagoya: Chunichi Publishing Company.
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html. Accessed April 21, 2008.
Abstract
Ever since the first performance of the British comic opera Mikado in 1885 Japan played an
important role in Western popular music. In the 20th century hundreds of songs treating
the theme Japan were composed in North and South America, in Australia and in all
countries of Europe. In my paper I first try to give an overview of the variety of songs which
referred to Japan (love songs, war songs etc.) before I proceed to an analysis of several
pieces as to their lyrics, Japanese elements in the music and the beautiful covers of the sheet
music. As can be expected most songs are expressions of the prevailing Japan stereotypes in
a society at a certain point of time.
The second part of the paper deals with changes in these songs, which have been showing an
even greater output over the past forty years together with Japan becoming an important global
player. It is interesting to note, though, that several of the most successful songs do no longer sell
‘Geisha and Fujiyama’ stereotypes but rather give a more balanced view of Japanese phenomena,
while songs with stereotypical contents continue, but seem to have a smaller audience.
Santrauka
Jau nuo pat pirmojo komiškosios britų operos „Mikado“ pasirodymo (1885) išryškėjo
Japonijos vaidmens vakarietiškoje populiariojoje muzikoje svarba. XX a. Šiaurės ir Pietų
Amerikoje, Australijoje ir visose Europos valstybėse buvo sukurta šimtai dainų naudojant
Japonijos tematiką.
Prieš pradedant analizuoti keleto kūrinių lyriką, japoniškus elementus ir gražius natų viršelius,
pirmiausia straipsnyje apžvelgiamos įvairios dainos (meilės, karo ir kt.), mininčios Japoniją.
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Kaip ir buvo galima tikėtis, dauguma šių dainų yra atitinkamu laikotarpiu visuomenėje
dominavusių Japonijos stereotipų atspindys.
Antroje straipsnio dalyje nagrinėjamas šių dainų kitimas, kurio atvejų per paskutinius 40
metų, Japonijai tapus svarbia pasaulio dalimi, labai pagausėjo.
Įdomu tai, kad keletas pačių garsiausių dainų jau nepopuliarina geišos ir Fudžijamos
stereotipo, o pateikia harmoningesnį japoniškojo fenomeno reginį, ir, nors stereotipinio
turinio dainų vis dar klausoma, jos, atrodo, pritraukia mažesnę klausytojų dalį.