Japan as Portrayed in 19th-Century Western Music

Mitsuhira examines 19th-century Western sheet music to trace shifting images of Japan in popular culture. From early piano pieces such as A Japanese Air (1815) to operettas like The Mikado (1885) and The Geisha (1896), Japan was variously imagined as exotic, comic, feudal, or modern. Publishers often blended Japanese motifs with Chinese ones, reflecting Orientalist conflations. By the late century, however, foreign experts in Japan, including Rudolf Dittrich and Francis Piggott, sought to document Japanese music seriously. These diverse representations illustrate how Japonaiserie and Japonisme intersected in the Western imagination, embedding ‘Japan’ in global soundscapes of modernity.