Papers by Nathanial Gailey-Schiltz
The Occupation of Japan by Allied forces following World War II marked an unprecedented incursion... more The Occupation of Japan by Allied forces following World War II marked an unprecedented incursion of outside (soto) influence into Japanese affairs. From the Meiji Restoration through WWII, the Japanese government had practiced censorship, especially of Western ideas, but General MacArthur’s “Press Code for Japan,” enforced by Occupation forces, codified appropriate topics of national discourse from a new, foreign angle. This paper examines one facet of postwar music culture: the censorship of published ryūkōka, a style of popular song mixing Japanese and Western musical idioms. Ryūkōka—popular in the decades before WWII but ostensibly forced out of public attention in favor of military tunes as Japan focused on the war effort—surged into popularity again after the war, and its publication was subject to Allied censorship following the new Press Code. While this music was first subject to choices made by Japanese songwriters and performers about what kinds of topics should be “in” and “out,” the published music that consumers could purchase was subject to a second, foreign interpretation of appropriateness, and these two viewpoints, one from inside and one from outside, did not always agree. Through an examination of censored materials in the Gordon W. Prange Collection, this paper explores the negotiation of these viewpoints and ideas about Japanese musical identity during the Occupation.
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Papers by Nathanial Gailey-Schiltz