Exaggerated claims are commonplace. But one claim that cannot be disputed is that Tokyo is the epicenter of classical music not only in Japan but, indeed, throughout Asia. Where else, for example, can one find eight – count ’em, eight! – full time, full-size, fully professional orchestras of its own? Not London. Not Moscow. Not New York. Not Berlin. Not Vienna. Each has its own subscription base and all enjoy full or nearly-full houses for each performance. Collectively they provide more than 1,200 concerts a year, including services for opera, ballet and other events. The Top Three of these Big Eight, based on salary and budget, are the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Rounding out the list are the Tokyo City Philharmonic, Japan Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic and Tokyo Symphony. All eight are capable of superlative work and any attempt to rank them inevitably leads to frustration and failure. Within a period of just two weeks one can often hear performances by all of the Big Eight and, on occasion, purely by happenstance, all eight are performing on the same day.
But even these eight are only the tip of the iceberg. Throughout Japan there are about 1,600 orchestras of one kind or another, about half of which are in the Tokyo area and some of which bear such unlikely names as Amadeus, Appassionata, Cosmos, Esperanto, Kinki (that’s a place name!), Maple, Earl Grey and Cordon Bleu.
Halls large and small suitable for classical music can be found all over Japan, with about 200 of them in the Tokyo area alone. No fewer than seven in this city regularly accommodate performances by full-size orchestras, with Suntory Hall leading the pack as Japan’s premier concert venue. Until Suntory opened in 1986, the Bunka Kaikan, located in Ueno Park along with its fabulous museums of both western and Japanese art, served the purpose. Since then additional fine halls have opened, including the Bunkamura, the Metropolitan, Sumida Triphony, Tokyo Opera City (in fact a concert hall, not an opera house) and, in nearby Yokohama, the Minato Mirai Hall. Also just outside Tokyo, but still within the Greater Metropolitan area, is the MUZA Kawasaki Symphony Hall, which rivals Suntory in acoustic excellence. For the 2,000 or so recitals, chamber music concerts and performances by smaller orchestras given annually in Tokyo, there are dozens of smaller beautifully designed, acoustically excellent halls available, among them Oji Hall, Toppan Hall, Tsuda Hall and Kioi Hall. There are even suitable concert venues in department stores and large company headquarters.
The Japanese prepare well for their concert outings, sit in sepulchral silence, heavily patronize what are probably the largest CD stores left on the planet and pay astronomical ticket prices for the top visiting attractions (up to 43,000 yen – over £300 – for the Berlin Philharmonic).
Where does the Japanese love for western classical music come from? Contrary to common assumption, this is not a recent development. Ever since the opening of Japan to the West in the late 19th century, exposure to western culture has been part of the curriculum in the Japanese educational system. Some of Japan’s orchestras are older than many in the United States – the NHK Symphony Orchestra goes back to 1926 and the Tokyo Philharmonic even further ― well over a century. “Every elementary school has a music room with a piano and portraits of the famous composers on the walls,” notes Shinsuke Inoue, public relations officer at Suntory Hall. “Music is everywhere in your life when you are in school; you can’t get away from it.” The Tokyo Music School, the first institution to teach western classical music in Japan, opened in 1887.
This is the culture that nurtures a phenomenon like the Japanese craze for Beethoven’s Ninth, which receives over two hundred performances each December with choruses singing from memory. One of these events features a chorus of 10,000, so well trained that their German is intelligible despite the gargantuan numbers. The history of the mania for daiku (Japanese for “The Ninth”), as the Japanese call it for short, goes back to World War 1, when German POWs sang the “Ode to Joy” in an effort to sustain their spirits in a time of hardship. Following a performance by the released prisoners, the Japanese started paying attention to this music too. Throughout the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s, they increasingly incorporated it into their social, political and, during World War 2, even military functions. By the 1960s The Ninth was as much a part of their culture as bunraku and kabuki. Today The Ninth serves the Japanese not only as a gratifying musical experience but as a deep well of inspiration to encourage achievement and to find courage in the face of adversity.