The Representation of East Asian Music in Silent Film Accompaniment Scores

Abstract

which created a dual structure: Japanese films were accompanied by music such as shamisen and taiko drums, which were used to accompany Kabuki plays, and foreign films were accompanied by Western music played by a small orchestra of violins, pianos, trumpets, and other instruments.1 Furthermore, in the 1910s, when Western culture had not yet become familiar to the general Japanese public, this dual structure divided the audience as well: the intellectuals watched Western films and the masses watched Japanese films. This structure changed in the late 1920s when Japanese films rapidly evolved by adopting film techniques from developed countries, and the intellectual class began to watch Japanese films; concurrently, the masses, now more familiar with Western culture, began to watch foreign films. This mixing of foreign and Japanese film audiences led to a form of Japanese-Western ensemble music, which was used mainly for accompaniment music during screenings of Japanese films. During the silent era, American accompaniment score anthologies, such as those of Erno Rapée, were imported to Japan, and the same method of selecting ready-made music Introduction