The Concept of Soundscape as a Bridge between East and West

Abstract

Abstract It was during the last decade of the nineteenth century that Western modernism, including literature and the visual and performing arts, made its appearance in Japan. In the case of music, the Meiji Restoration government (1868‒1912) strongly promoted European music to many elementary schools right after the failure to create a new Japanese music. More significant was the fact that the history of European classical music, which evolved over several centuries in the West, was introduced into Japan within a period of approximately ten years. Since then, European music’s autonomy and hegemony have been received at face value and taken for granted in Japan. The Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer attempted to retune and recreate this unequal flow between East and West in music education, and his concept of soundscape can possibly make music education more transparent in Japan. The author attempts to enter that discourse in this chapter.