ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact of urban ‘noise’ on pre-modern Japanese musical aesthetics through the works of Tateyama Noboru (1876–1926), the first indigenous composer to incorporate western music into Japanese music for the koto, a 13-stringed zither. The music he turned to in his attempts to modernise Japanese was the western military march, then part of the urban sound environment, that embodied a highly politicised referencing of the contemporary world. The chapter illustrates how the original lyrical sentiment pursued in Edo-period aesthetic publics undergoes a violent rupture with Tateyama’s innovations that then leads to the formation of new sociabilities and new understandings of music. His opus is still perceived as transitional, which dismisses the importance of his engagement with the process of Japanese modernity.
