JAPANESE REVOLT

Evening Star, Issue 23130, 2 December 1938, Page 1

JAPANESE REVOLT

AGAINST WESTERN MUSIC Another move in the fashionable direction of “ autarky ” and self-suffi-ciency arrives with a Japanese proposal “ for the elimination'of Western music from Japan as a means of serving the nation in its crisis,” says- the 1 '■ Manchester Guardian.’ The suggestion is that all foreign music, “ whether classical or jazz, shall be excluded not only from Japanese concerts, but also from wireless programmes and gramophone records. Without knowing precisely how much Bach and Beethoven is put over for the benefit of Japanese listeners, it may still be assumed that the task of extirpating the fox-trot, fast or slow, and .similar musical “ numbers ” is one that -will not be accomplished in the twinkling of an eye. Such melodies, loudly though they may be denounced by some musical purists, seem to represent the one variety of popular art which really does “ laugh at frontiers.” Anyone who fiddles about with the wireless knobs as a Saturday evening draw* nearer to midnight might easily" derive an impression that the whole of Europe,-, from Lapland to the isles of Greece, i» fox-trotting or waltzing (or possibly crooning) to what are more _or less identical melodies. The continent is then offered as one big dance band “ doing ” the same “ stuff.” If the Far East has fallen under the same influence (and accounts of dance balls in large cities suggest that it has), the establishment of a light-orchestral autarky for Japan sounds _an even tougher job than crushing China.