Sustainability, accessibility, and community: a collaborative model of Japanese music in American higher education

Abstract

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.