The rules of heart : Nakayama Shimpei's popular songs in the history of Modern Japan

Abstract

Composer Nakayama Shimpei (1887-1952) wrote more than 300 popular songs in his lifetime. Most are still well known and recorded regularly. An entrepreneur, he found ways to create popular songs that powered Japan's nascent recording industry in the 1920s and 1930s. An artist, his combination of Japanese and Western musical styles and tropes appealed to Japanese sentiments in a way that not only reflected the historical and social context, but anticipated and explained those historical changes to his listeners. This dissertation seeks to use a method suggested by Pierre Bourdieu to analyze the social context of Nakayama's work. The analytical model is didactic, seeking to compare the outcomes suggested by Bourdieu's theory and modern analysis of popular music to the events that occurred in the context of Japan's development of a record industry and popular music market between 1887 and 1952. The dissertation evaluates Nakayama's positions within the Field of Musical Production and the Field of Power and compares that history to the field theory of Bourdieu. The dissertation concludes that Bourdieu's ideas provide an excellent framework for analysis of the social and economic meaning of popular songs, but that reality in Japan was more complex than the theoretical construction. Bourdieu built artistic capital in a society in which music was changing rapidly and Western music held a cachet, whether classical or popular. Nakayama's uncanny ability to make listening to Western music a comfortable experience for Japanese by adding elements from Japanese musical styles allowed him to be successful financially, and to hold respect within the artistic community as well. The ultimate goal of the dissertation is to show how popular songs can be utilized as primary sources to help deepen our understanding of historical contexts.