Abstract: Few decades in recent Japanese history have been as politically fraught as the 1960s, typically characterized as a decade of protests. Two dominant forms of music emerged from this period: protest folk and enka. These two genres reflected the conflicting visions of “Japan” that were formulated by the younger and older generations. Both enka and protest folk drew upon Japanese folk symbols to formulate a way forward for the postwar society, but each saw these symbols in very different ways. This paper examines the rhetoric by which protest folk and enka music constructed idealized visions of what Japan had been in the past and what it could be in the future. Furthermore, it analyzes the different ways in which rural Japan is constructed in these songs to create very different ideological results. The paper concludes that enka and folk are both driven by themes of urban alienation and blue-collar imagery, and differ only in the ends they hope to achieve.

Few decades in recent Japanese history have been as politically fraught as the 1960s. In historical accounts, authors typically characterize it as a decade of protests carried out by students dissatisfied with a host of social issues including the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty (Nichibei Anzen Hosho Joyaku, hereafter given as its abbreviated name “Ampo”), a troubled university system seen as desperately outdated, and the escalating war in Vietnam. These protests, which became very violent by the end of the decade, represented at one level a struggle over the ways in which the Japanese people would define themselves, specifically in relation to the United States in the post-Occupation period and to their own wartime history. The ideologies at work in this period can be further understood by studying two dominant forms of music that were produced at the time: protest folk and enka. In these two genres are reflected the conflicting visions of “Japan” that were formulated by the younger and older generations respectively, visions which both drew upon Japanese folk symbols to formulate a way forward for the postwar society, but which saw these symbols in very different ways.

Two protests in particular dominate the discourse on 1960s Japan, and using these two protests I shall show the changing sentiments of students that led to the rise of protest folk music. These protests took place in 1960 and 1969 and primarily focused on resisting the renewal of the Ampo treaty. As Tsurumi Kazuko notes in her comparison of the two protests, a heavy increase in violence was seen in the 1969 protest relative to its counterpart at the start of the decade. (Tsurumi, Continuity and Change 1970, 28) Concomitantly, the late 1960s also saw the rise of Japanese “folk” music – with “folk” here being used in the sense of the “folk movement” rather than traditional Japanese songs – a means by which students voiced their dissatisfaction with the status quo in what Carolyn Stevens calls “the first direct and overt politicization of popular music” in the postwar period. (Stevens 2008, 64)

In view of the students’ dissatisfaction with extant structures of power and authority, it is unsurprising that the music they produced also undermined traditional notions of authenticity and power. Stevens defines Japanese folk music as a genre “amateurs could take part in through production, rather than just consumption,” since folk musicians opted for the more economical, stripped-down sound of the acoustic guitar which could be easily bought by most anyone that wished to learn. This was in contrast to the amplified, professional sound of the electric guitar popular in the early-decade eleki and GS (Group Sounds) movements that had been inspired by foreign acts such as the Ventures. (Stevens 2008, 44) A monograph published by the Japan branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music states, for instance, “Many young people began to learn by themselves how to play the guitar in the ‘folk’ boom. Since then the guitar has been one of the main tools for Japanese young people’s self-expression.” (International Association for the Study of Popular Music 1991, 16) I would draw particular attention here to the “self” of “self-expression,” as the folk boom represented a more conscious effort to define a Japanese identity than most other postwar music movements.

Part of this effort was the so-called “rock in Japanese” debate which arose in the 1960s with the growing popularity of rock and roll in Japan. For much of the decade, Japanese rock and roll bands were expected to sing in English, even if the songs were original compositions, as this was viewed as the “authentic” language of the genre. (Bourdaghs 2005, 123) As the decade drew to a close, however, musicians like those participating in the folk movement worked to create a wasei (“made in Japan”) style that was more directly accessible and meaningful to a Japanese-speaking audience. Michael Bourdaghs emphasizes the importance of folk music’s Japanese lyrics when he analyzes it as a genre in which musicality was “a secondary medium, one important only in so far as it conveyed the primary message contained in the lyrics.” (Bourdaghs 2005, 122) The sparse sound of the acoustic guitar used by the majority of folk musicians was thus not only important because it was different from extant musical styles, but also because it was intended from the start to be secondary to the singer’s lyrics.

Perhaps one of the most famous artists to come out of the folk boom of the late 1960s was Okabayashi Nobuyasu (born 1946). His songs, sometimes controversial enough to be banned by the Recording Industry Association of Japan, dealt with many different politically sensitive topics. Roger Goodman lists just a few of the issues covered on Okabayashi’s debut album, saying:

“Watashi wo Danzai Seyo contained songs criticizing the Vietnam War (‘Sensou no Oyadama’), Japanese labor conditions (‘Sanya Blues’), and the perils of Japan’s capitalist aspirations (‘Sore de Jiyuu Natta no Kai’). Okabayashi also wrote songs that explored taboo topics like the discrimination against descendants of Edo Japan’s pariah caste, the burakumin (‘Tegami’).” (Goodman 2010)

In the tradition of folk singers in the United States such as Bob Dylan, Okabayashi’s songs profiled Japanese on the margins of mainstream society, the same Japanese whom student radicals claimed to represent in their struggles, as a way of criticizing the social structure that created their disadvantaged position. Ironically, these students “came from relatively higher upper-status households” that were most likely separated from the working class with whom they chose to identify in their activist political orientation (Krauss 1974, 52).

Furthermore, by participating in demonstrations, these students put at risk the elite futures guaranteed by attending their respective universities. Steinhoff describes “an ideology of self-denial and rejection of privilege” that the students mobilized in the second half of the decade toward a twofold goal. (Steinhoff 1999, 5) First, they distanced themselves from their upper-class roots in order to position themselves as more in-tune with the plight of the working class. Secondly, they used it as an ideological tool to bind the group of students together more closely in self-sacrificing solidarity. The music that students listened to and produced both reflected and reproduced their self-sacrificing beliefs, such as in Okabayashi’s quietly reassuring song “Tomo yo”:

Folk music not only served as a forum in which students voiced their complaints, but also reflexively addressed the students themselves, urging them on to selfless acts of denial that they felt positioned them symbolically alongside the disadvantaged lower classes for whom they sought to act as standard bearers.

In sum, the students felt that, through their own self-denial, they would be able to create a Japan that was sensitive to the needs not only of the ruling elite, but also the marginalized working class and rural citizenry. Folk singers drew upon imagery of these classes to call attention to the failings of the postwar Japanese government to make good on the notion that democracy was a system that benefited all members of society. The students and musicians called for a Japan truly run by its people, or in the words of “Watashitachi no nozomu mono wa,” another song by Okabayashi, “What we wish for / isn’t ‘us for the sake of society.’ / What we wish for / is ‘society for the sake of us.’” (Watashitachi no nozomu mono wa / shakai no tame no watashi de wa naku / watashitachi no nozomu mono wa / watashitachi no tame no shakai na no da.) This meant not only a reform of Japanese government policy, but also a reconfiguration of Japan’s relationship with the United States, which the students felt was embodied in Ampo. For protest folk singers, the wasei philosophy applied not just to their music, but to their hopes for society.

In contrast to protest folk stood the genre of enka, which could be loosely defined as “Japanese country western” in its frequently pessimistic subject matter. Enka was born out of similar feelings of alienation from society at large, but rather than being the voice of student dissent, it was an expression of emotional isolation by Japanese in middle-age or older. Ironically, however, enka also has its roots in protest movements. The IASPM states, “The word enka originated during the people’s freedom movement of the 1880s as the name of a kind of protest song.” (International Association for the Study of Popular Music 1991, 12) After a lull in popularity during the first half of the twentieth century, the modern form of enka “came into use in the latter half of the 1960s… in reaction to Japanese pop, and perhaps also as a reaction to the wider Western presence in popular culture.” (Stevens 2008, 45) Though it shared foundational roots with protest folk music – one could even reasonably consider it to be the protest folk of Meiji Japan – enka would come to represent a completely different view of Japan and its people than folk music.

Socially, enka is completely different from folk music. Unlike the often solo artists of the folk music world, enka music is the product of group collaboration at every level, to the point that singers become essentially interchangeable. Songs are written and performed following kata (patterns) which Yano describes as being used so that “a 1993 hit is… easily mistaken for a 1953 one, and for the duration of the song, the forty-year gap is neatly erased.” (Yano 2002, 3) The purpose of this erasure is to bind together in extratemporal solidarity the listeners and performers and to make them as timeless as their conception of “authentic” Japan. Within enka is another path for Japanese identity, separate from that of folk music. It is a perpetual Japan that has existed unchanged forever, merely being superficially covered up by the progression of urbanization. For those that listened to it in the 1960s, the proper way forward for Japanese society was actually to go backward, back to a morally “purer” time of tradition.

Although enka music calls for a return to a more traditional time in Japanese history, i.e. before the U.S. Occupation following World War II, it uses primarily western instrumentation to create its sound. Enka performances are accompanied by “some combination of guitar, violin, mandolin, saxophone, clarinet, oboe, and accordion,” with only occasional additions of Japanese instruments “to impart a traditional Japanese ‘flavor’ to the music.” (Yano 2002, 103) But even though these additions are infrequent, the “flavor” they create is the part of the music that becomes most important to its creation of tradition.

In production, as well, enka represents an entirely different school of thought from folk music. Yano describes the enka industry as one defined by metaphors of “perseverance, effort, spirit, repetition, and rank.” (Yano 2002, 45) Through its hierarchical production system in which deference must be paid to one’s seniors in the industry, regardless of relative success, enka becomes an example in practice of the values in its songs. As a genre, it is seen as the underdog persevering in competition with “the showy, facile, heavily western-influenced ‘pops’ whose popularity looms large.” (Yano 1997, 117) The genre itself becomes metaphorical for the perseverance of the old way of Japanese life, and those that listen to and produce it are positioned as “the vanguard of Japanese tradition, both culturally and psychologically.” (Stevens 2008, 45) These fans are not just stewards of a genre, but of Japanese culture itself. Through concert attendance, record sales, and fan club memberships, they are contributing to the perpetuation of Japanese culture in the midst of the westernization that took place during and after the Occupation. Their ideas of what Japan should be in the future were contained not just in the lyrics of enka, but in its very structure as an industry.

For its listeners, enka’s strength as a cultural pillar lies in the collective solidarity it encourages. “The enticement of enka,” says Christine Yano, “is that it suggests a forum for collective nostalgia, which actively appropriates and shapes the past, thereby binding the group [i.e. listeners] together.” (Yano 2002, 15) The shape that that past takes, specifically, is that of the furusato, which is directly translated as “old village,” but which carries meaning much greater than such a simple translation can convey. Enka songs contain images of fishing towns on the outskirts of Japan, villages set amongst rice paddies, and other rural cultural signifiers that, to those who consume them, define “Japan.” Furusato is a shared nostalgia, the simple life of rural Japan from which listeners of enka all imagine they come, and to which they all can return through music.

But just as important as furusato’s universality to its listeners is its distance, for it is in this distance that it becomes desirable. Yano writes that although enka offers to erase the distance between its listeners and their mythical homesteads, “the erasure of distance threatens the very need for desire.” (Yano 2002, 16) This distance is more than simply geographical or temporal, however; it is metaphorical and even spiritual. For as Robertson states, “with the rapid urbanization of the countryside since the postwar period, the Japanese ‘can’t go home again.’” (Robertson 1988, 497) With no referent, the nostalgia for furusato is at risk of fading into historical memory and disappearing. How, then, is enka able to sustain itself? As a genre whose subject matter is by definition illusory, how does enka continue to thrive on images of the furusato?

The answer lies in the rhetorical process of furusato-zukuri (furusato-making). This is an active process present in enka as well as many other institutions that seek to capitalize on the nostalgia for “Japan.” Robertson describes it as being motivated by “nostalgia for a sense of nostalgia” which is created through “a diffuse sense of homelessness” brought about by the loss of the same traditional rural villages that would later be appropriated by the rhetorical device of the furusato. (Robertson 1988, 497) In enka, furusato-making is accomplished by keeping the discursive distance between the modern listener and the traditional subject just small enough that it seems to be just around the proverbial corner. While the most common word found by Yano in enka lyrics was “yume” (“dream”), the third was “anata” (“you”). (Yano 2002, 94) From this, it can be inferred that the lyrics are often addressed directly to the listener, creating a personal identification with the furusato described in the lyrics. Furthermore, this “old village” is described as something that waits for the listener in their dreams (yume), giving it an exoticized immediacy: it is at once close at hand and far away. Though the listeners may not be able to inhabit the furusato physically, they need only to go to sleep to find it.

As could be expected, enka’s audience is no more representative of the figures in its songs than their urban lifestyles are of its furusato imagery. “The characters that inhabit the enka world – bar hostesses, gangsters (yakuza), sailors – are today marginalized.” (Yano 2002, 15) In addition to the socially marginalized characters mentioned by Yano are the geographically marginal figures of the rice farmer or the fisherman. These characters in turn often end up – thanks to the “diffuse homelessness” endemic to urbanization as mentioned above – as migrants to urban centers, pining for their country homes and working low-paying, physically strenuous jobs.

These subjects, however, are the same kind of blue-collar laborers seen in the rhetoric of the student radicals and their socialist protests. In fact, based on lyrics alone, it would be very difficult for most to tell whether folk singer Okabayashi Nobuyasu’s song “Sanya Blues” is of the folk or enka genre:

Kyō no shigoto wa tsurakatta Today’s work was painful

Ato wa shōchū wo aoru dake Afterwards, I’ll just gulp down some liquor

Dōse dōse San’ya no doya zumai In any case, I’ll live in the flophouses of San’ya

Hoka ni yaru koto arya shinai There’s nothing else to do

Hitori sakaba de nomu sake ni I miss the past I can’t return to

Kaeranu mukashi wa natsukashii that I see in the sake I drink alone at a bar

Naite naite mitatte nan ni naru I start to cry and cry, what will become of me?

Ima ja San’ya ga furusato yo For now, San’ya is my home

The tale it tells of a rural migrant to Tokyo doing construction work – likely as a day-laborer without permanent employment – is very similar to most tales of urban isolation found in enka.

The key difference between the two genres is represented in the line “I miss the past I can’t return to that I see in the sake I drink alone at a bar.” According to Stevens, “Other kayōkyoku [popular music] artists such as the Crazy Cats too poked jest at the new urban lifestyle, but returning to the countryside was never an option for them; in contrast, enka singers sang of an idealized Japanese rural life that was always waiting for them.” (Stevens 2008, 45) This is a very interesting statement when taken with Robertson’s concept of furusato-zukuri, as described above. Whereas folk singers sing for a working class forever robbed of its rural past – the past they see only in their sake cups – enka singers assert that such a past still exists, even if only in enka music. By doing so, enka music in effect states that such a “Japan” is real: an imaginary place that exists truly in the enka community’s collective emotional life. As a result, the values of this past become a lived present, and the “Japan” proposed by enka suddenly takes on the appearance of a community-wide furusato. As a way forward for society, enka proposes an ideological furusato-zukuri that would create a nationwide furusato, or Furusato Japan, to borrow Robertson’s term. With twentieth century mass communications technology, furusato no longer need be a small mountain hamlet; instead, it can be disseminated across all of Japan, becoming a shared emotional space among all Japanese that is mediated by the institution of enka.

It comes as no surprise, then, that enka today “has the reputation of a genre which appeals to blue-collar more than white-collar workers, to rural-dwellers more than urbanites.” (Yano 1997, 116) It would seem that the rural laborers over whom folk and enka battled for representation chose to listen to music that positions them at the forefront of national furusato-zukuri, rather than as being at the mercy of an exploitative capitalist government. As a result, enka has continued on in varying degrees of popularity to the present, whereas folk music in the form that it took in the late ‘60s has largely faded from Japanese popular music. To be sure, both genres proposed visions of Japanese society that would require large-scale social change, but the more conservative enka, which held that “Japan” was already present within the hearts of its people, proved more attractive to the blue-collar audience whose old-fashioned values it extolled.

Conclusion

The onset of 1970 in many ways signaled the end of the protest folk movement and the student protest movement in general. The passage of a University Control Law in July of the previous year placed increased pressure on universities to end campus conflict quickly by giving the government the option to take control of persistently disrupted schools. By mid-1970, student radicals had largely been quelled. (Steinhoff 1999, 6) In the following decade, Japan would witness the “ideological conversion” of the student radicals, who would give up their dissident views and even try to hide that they ever had them in order to succeed in careers in the very capitalist system they had decried. (Krauss 1974) In the face of strengthening government crackdowns and the prospect of losing their chance at a profitable career, many protestors gave up.

Along with the student movement went the protest folk genre, which began to be viewed as overly polemical and, moreover, out-of-touch with the working-class subjects it sought to represent. Later popular music would take a more optimistic view of what Japan was at present, with bands like Happy End, which was formed by the members of folk singer Okabayashi Nobuyasu’s backup band, consciously rejecting the messages of their predecessors’ music. (Bourdaghs 2005, 122) These bands viewed Japan as fully capable of standing in parity with the United States, in contrast to folk singers’ implicit assumptions that Japan held an inferior position after the occupation. It could even be argued that they made these claims in a more “Japanese” manner; for while folk singers drew heavily on American influence (even singing translated versions of songs by artists like Bob Dylan), Stevens describes a “growing trend in popular music” that took place over the latter half of the twentieth century, one in which musicians moved “from the West… to Japan as the source of inspiration of J-pop and rock” and eventually “defined itself as self referential, its own ‘source of tradition.’” (Stevens 2008, 61) In a debate about Japanese identity which relied to a large degree on appropriating images of “tradition,” this was an important transition for popular music to make if it hoped to gain legitimacy.

The debate over the Japanese identity in the years following the end of the Allied Occupation was obviously one of critical importance if Japan was to move ahead as an independent, self-sufficient country. In the context of essentially one-party rule by the reigning Liberal Democrats, however, it would not be a debate that was carried out in government. Rather, it was waged by the Japanese people themselves, partly through the medium of popular music. The two “camps” that emerged were divided largely along generational lines, with the student protestors at Japanese universities promoting a Socialist image of Japan through folk music and middle-aged Japanese producing and listening to enka as a way of recreating their idea of Japanese traditional life. The artists operating in these genres reproduced and reinforced the images of Japan held by their listeners, at once shaping and shaped by their discourses.

Interestingly, folk and enka performers used similar methods to promote their view of Japan. Both genres attempted to appeal to the working classes of Japanese society. These were the rural laborers – many of whom moved to the cities to find industrial work – that appeared so frequently in the lyrics of singers at the time. Imagery of these workers was manufactured and performed by singers, highlighting either the ways in which the government took advantage of the workers, as in the folk songs of the students, or their longing for their furusato to emphasize the cultural “purity” of pre-modern Japan in enka. Eventually, it was to be enka that found more lasting traction with the Japanese people, and protest folk had faded by the end of the decade.

The political implications of the Japanese people’s choice would be played out over the remainder of the twentieth century. Japan’s politics were markedly conservative in nature, leading to a stalling government when the economic bubble that had built throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s burst in the mid-90s. The forms of popular music that would arise in these decades, chief among them the genre of “idol pop,” were similarly conservative in their contents and, moreover, largely non-political. The 21st century, however, has been marked by a proliferation of non-mainstream musical forms. While these “indie” genres can trace their roots to the 1980s, it was not until the turn of the millennium that independent artists and labels began to multiply, perhaps due to the lowered cost of publicity afforded by the Internet. (Stevens 2008, 58-59) Whether this is indicative of a changing political climate is yet unclear, but it is undeniable that popular music – far from being a politically toothless, purely commercial form – is often highly ideologically charged, and capable of galvanizing an entire generation.

References

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—. Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

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