In exploring his aesthetic stance towards merging stylistic idoms of Japanese and Western music, To¯ru Takemitsu introduces the concept of ‘mirror’ as a central metaphor: he discusses how he began composing by projecting his musical voice upon the giant Western ‘mirror’, then in discovering other cultural ‘mirrors’, allowed the various reflections of such mirrors to come together.29 He has also repeatedly spoken against the superficial merging of Western and non-Western musical practices. Example 11.3 shows an excerpt from To¯ru Takemitsu’s Shu¯teiga: In an Autumn Garden (1973-6) for gagaku ensemble.30 In contrast to Matsudaira, a consummate modernist who saw gagaku as an abstract structure, Takemitsu saw gagaku as a self-contained, complete musical system of expression whose essence should not be altered.