Expressive Meaning and Historical Grounding in the Film Music of Fumio Hayasaka and Toru Takemitsu

Authors

  • Timothy Koozin University of Houston

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.v3i1.5

Keywords:

film music, Hayasaka, Takemitsu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Kaufman

Abstract

As an introduction to the volume of the Journal of Film Music devoted to the film scores of Fumio Hayasaka and Toru Takemitsu, this article explores Hayasaka’s artistic legacy in establishing practices that Takemitsu would personalize and extend in his film music. Hayasaka’s contributions during the interwar and postwar years would help to establish modern artistic traditions in Japanese music and film that explore boundaries between reality and dream, provide social commentary on the present through references to the past, and express individuality through the active negotiation of Japanese traditions and global ways of framing knowledge. Takemitsu’s film and concert works display an originality grounded in multiple layers of tradition that directly relates to Hayasaka’s innovations. The article offers a critical perspective on the role of music in films by Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Philip Kaufman.

Author Biography

  • Timothy Koozin, University of Houston

    Timothy Koozin is associate professor and coordinator of the music theory area at the University of Houston, Moores School of Music.

References

Barrett, Gregory. 1989. Archetypes in Japanese film: The sociopolitical and religious significance of the principal heroes and heroines. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.

Burch, Noël. 1979. To the distant observer: Form and meaning in Japanese cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cohen, Robert N. 1992. Why does Oharu faint? Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu and patriarchal discourse. In Reframing Japanese cinema, ed. Arthur Nolletti, Jr. and David Desser. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 33-55.

Desser, David. 1988. Eros plus massacre: An introduction to the Japanese New Wave cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Domenig, Roland. 2004. The anticipation of freedom; Art Theatre Guild and Japanese independent cinema. Translation of “Art Theatre Guild: Unabhängiges Japanisches Kino 1962–1984,” the catalogue of the ATG retrospective, Vienna, October, 2003. http://www.midnighteye.com/features/art-theatre-guild.shtml. Retrieved March 28, 2010.

Galbraith IV, Stuart. 2001. The emperor and the wolf: The lives and films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. New York: Faber and Faber.

Galliano, Luciana. 2002. Yôgaku: Japanese music in the twentieth century, trans. Martin Hayes. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.

Goodwin, James. 1993. Akira Kurosawa and intertextual cinema. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hatten, Robert S. 2004. Interpreting musical gestures, topics, and tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Herd, Judith Ann. 1989. The neonationalist movement: Origins of Japanese contemporary music. Perspectives of New Music 27, no. 2 (Summer): 118-63. doi:10.2307/833406

———. 2004. The cultural politics of Japan’s modern music: Nostalgia, nationalism, and identity in the interwar years. In Locating East Asia in Western art music, ed. Yayoi Uno Everett and Frederick Lau. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 40-56.

Kobayashi, Jun. 2001. Nihon Eigaongaku no Kyoseitachi (Mega stars of Japanese film music), vol. 1. Tokyo: Hiraisha.

Kramer, Lawrence. 1990. Music as cultural practice. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kurosawa, Akira. 1982. Something like an autobiography, trans. Audie E. Bock. New York: Vintage Books.

———. 1986. Ran, trans. Tadashi Shishido. Boston: Shambhala.

Lefebvre, Martin. 2006. Between setting and landscape in film. In Landscape and film, ed., Martin Lefebvre. New York: Routledge, 19-60.

McDonald, Keiko. 1983. Cinema east: A critical study of major Japanese films. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

———. 1994. Japanese classical theater in films. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Mellen, Joan. 1976. The waves at Genji’s door: Japan through its cinema. New York: Pantheon Books.

Okamoto, Yoshinari. 2002. (Director) Akira Kurosawa: It is wonderful to create, a documentary film included in the Criterion Collection DVD, Drunken Angel (1948), Akira Kurosawa, director.

Ono, Mitsuko and Tomoko Isshiki. 2010. Interview with Asaka Takemitsu, trans. Tomoko Isshiki with David Pacun, manuscript kindly provided by the authors.

Pacun, David. 2006. “Thus we cultivate our own world, and thus we share it with others”: Kósçak Yamada’s visit to the United States in 1918–1919. American Music 24, no. 1 (Spring): 67-94. doi:10.2307/25046004

Prince, Stephen. 1991. The warrior’s camera: The cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Richie, Donald. 1971. Japanese cinema: Film style and national character. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

———. 1996. The films of Akira Kurosawa, third edn. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Siddons, James. 2001. Toru Takemitsu: A bio-bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Takemitsu, Toru. 1975. Ki no kagami, Sogen no kagami (Mirror of tree, Mirror of grass). Tokyo: Shincho Sha, 1975.

Yoda, Yoshikata. 1970. Mizoguchi Kenji no hito to geijutsu (Kenji Mizoguchi: The man and his art). Tokyo: Tabata Shoten.

Zwerin, Charlotte. 1994. (Director) Music for the movies: Toru Takemitsu. Sony.

Published

2010-12-22

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Koozin, T. (2010). Expressive Meaning and Historical Grounding in the Film Music of Fumio Hayasaka and Toru Takemitsu. Journal of Film Music, 3(1), 5-17. https://doi.org/10.1558/jfm.v3i1.5