In our series of interviews with artists who have connections to Mie Prefecture, this time we speak with Shinsuke Okamoto. Mr. Okamoto is an up-and-coming composer who teaches at our organization’s composition course.
—How have you studied music, from your first lessons through to graduate school?
I first studied music at around the age of five, when I attended a neighborhood Electone electronic organ class. I started because a close friend was going there, but at the time I had no particular attachment to music, so at around nine I stopped taking Electone lessons to prioritize another extracurricular activity. I then lived without much connection to music for a while, but at around twelve I happened to encounter Debussy’s piano pieces. They captivated me, and I began to want to create music like that myself. From then on I threw myself wholeheartedly into music, starting piano lessons in junior high school and teaching myself composition. I began studying composition properly in high school, under a teacher at a local university. When it came to university entrance examinations, my family’s circumstances meant that I could not spend an extra year preparing if I failed, and I was only allowed to apply to national or public universities relatively close to home. I remember studying as hard as I could, feeling that there was no second chance. Those efforts paid off, and I was able to study at Kyoto City University of Arts, where I am still enrolled.
I learned a truly wide range of things as an undergraduate. From écriture—the technical craft of musical writing—to compositional methods from every period and instrumentation, there was so much to learn that I ended up spending longer as an undergraduate than other people. As a result, I came to want to develop my ability to think about music more structurally and theoretically, and I chose musicology for my master’s degree. During that program I studied under Professor Toshie Kakinuma, a specialist in contemporary music. Her seminars, too, were a succession of new discoveries. I was able to study various musical theories that are not widely known in Japan, and research on rotational form in Sibelius was particularly stimulating for me. After earning my master’s in musicology, I entered the doctoral program in composition and have been studying under Professors Noriko Nakamura and Kenji Sakai. Professor Nakamura has taught me since my undergraduate years, and her influence can be seen in my current style, which takes Japan’s regional characteristics into account. I began studying under Professor Sakai when I entered the doctoral program, and his teaching made me think deeply about the meaning of every element within a work. His guidance helped fill in the pieces that had been missing from my compositions. Both have become enormously important figures for me.
I am currently devoting myself to composition and research in the doctoral program, and there seems to be no end to what there is to learn. Compared with composers of my generation, I have taken a somewhat roundabout route to get where I am, but everything I have learned along the way nourishes my work. I hope to keep learning many things and growing day by day.
—Changing your field when entering a master’s program sounds difficult at first glance. What were the challenges and benefits of switching from composition to musicology?
Acquiring the knowledge in the fields I needed in order to switch to musicology was very demanding. Normally, people enter a master’s program in musicology after thoroughly studying aesthetics and philosophy as undergraduates. In my case, however, I had studied almost nothing but composition, so I needed to go back and acquire the knowledge that musicology requires. In the end, I spent a year preparing before gaining admission, but the knowledge I acquired at that time has had a far from insignificant influence on my musical sensibility today.
There were also times when my knowledge of composition proved useful in musicology. While studying musicology, I often wrote concert program notes, and I was quite frequently asked to write about works that had not yet been performed in Japan or for which little research material was available. In such cases, my knowledge of composition was extremely useful: I could analyze a work from scratch myself, understand its content, and then write the notes. On one occasion I was asked to write about a work by a South African composer and found myself in difficulty because there was no reference material at all. It was thanks to the broad knowledge of composition I had acquired that I somehow managed to write it.
—You have done well in various competitions, including the composition category of the Bartók World Competition. What do you keep in mind?
I am not particularly good at composing with competitions in mind, but I always make a point of deciding the overall structure and the theories I will use in advance and making detailed sketches, so that the concept does not lose its focus. While composing, a good phrase may suddenly come to mind, but it will not necessarily work well when considered in terms of the piece’s overall balance. Making detailed sketches helps me judge things calmly when I revisit the work later. It takes courage to discard a phrase you like, but I try to make sure I can look at my work objectively.
—What kinds of concepts tend to appear in your works?
I cannot say clearly that any particular kind predominates, but the musical structures of my recent works are based on a similar concept.
I currently live in a rural part of my native Okayama, where there seems to be little besides the sea and mountains. Returning home from an urban area of Kansai after more than ten years changed my impressions of my hometown greatly, and I was deeply struck by nature’s many different aspects, including its abundance and its harshness. Surprisingly, these are things you may not notice if you have always lived in the countryside. Having lived in the city for a long time before discovering the slower passage of time peculiar to rural life, I became able to notice even subtle changes in the environment as the seasons turn. I feel that I increasingly reflect concepts based on these experiences in the structures of my compositions.
—You are involved in the international composition course in Ise-Shima and also compose works in Mie Prefecture. What are your thoughts on the musical environment in Mie?
In fact, I have been familiar with music from Mie Prefecture since childhood. I mean the lion dance of Ise Daikagura. My home serves as a resting place for the master of the tradition who tours our area, and partly for that reason they always give us a longer performance. The dancing and musical accompaniment of Daikagura have remained one of my pleasures ever since childhood.
Mie Prefecture has a wealth of cultural heritage, including traditional performing arts such as Ise Daikagura and the historic Ise Jingu shrine, and shows a deep understanding of the need to protect culture. It is wonderful that it actively hosts musical events, including not only the international composition course but also the Ise-Shima International Competition. The effects of COVID-19 continue to make cultural activities difficult, and I imagine that organizing these events must have been extremely challenging. Yet I believe it is precisely because Mie Prefecture understands the importance of culture that it is still able to hold such meaningful events.
I hope that it will continue to plan cultural events actively, embracing both traditional Japanese and Western music.
—Are there any musical activities you would like to undertake in Mie Prefecture in the future?
Mie is a region with a wealth of cultural heritage, so I think it would be interesting to develop some kind of collaborative project involving that heritage. One possibility, for example, would be a collaboration with the Daikagura I mentioned earlier. As existing performances combining contemporary music and Noh suggest, traditional Japanese music and contemporary music seem highly compatible to me. Noh and Daikagura are completely different in their musical character and staging, so it may not be an appropriate comparison, but I think new collaborations of this kind, which have not been attempted before, would be well worth exploring.
I am also interested in creating works with Mie Prefecture’s folk songs in mind. I have been thinking about contemporary music and regional identity, and I am currently presenting works based on folk songs from southern Okayama Prefecture, where I am from. This began when I questioned why contemporary music has shown so little understanding of the recent artistic trend toward locally rooted arts festivals held in many different places. I therefore aim to create works in which regional folk songs, handed down continuously to the present day, coexist with contemporary music that explores new musical possibilities. At a time when sustainable development is widely advocated, I believe it is important for artistic practice today to present music that looks back to the past while reaching toward the future, in the very region that serves as its subject. Mie Prefecture has historic folk songs such as Ise Ondo and Owase Bushi. I would be delighted to create works inspired by these traditional folk songs and present them in Mie in the near future.
—Many kinds of collaboration take place in cultural activities these days, but sometimes the elements do not come together well and seem mismatched. What does a successful collaboration mean to you?
This is only my personal view, but a mismatch can arise when there is an imbalance between the participants’ influence, or when each insists too strongly on having their own way and the sense of unity is lost. Collaboration requires the participants’ ideals to be brought together successfully. If you cannot respect what others bring to it, it can hardly be called ideal.
One successful example is Sports et divertissements, a collaboration between the composer Erik Satie and the designer Charles Martin. It is rather like an album of pictures, in which Satie added music to Martin’s scenes of everyday life, and the result is a wonderful work in which the strengths of both are beautifully harmonized. It was not originally conceived as a collaboration: the pictures were made first and the music was added afterward. Yet Satie fully respected the content of the pictures while accompanying them with musical works in his own distinctive idiom. The fact that it has been republished repeatedly right up to the present, more than a hundred years after its first appearance, gives some indication of how highly it is regarded. French art in the early twentieth century produced many remarkable collaborations, including Parade by Satie, Cocteau, and Picasso, and Les Biches by Poulenc, Laurencin, and Nijinska; the examples are too numerous to list. We can say that so many outstanding collaborations were made possible by the tremendous contribution of Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes he led. But it is the artists who create the works, and if their understanding of the work is at odds, they cannot produce something outstanding. In other words, these historically important collaborative works can be seen as the result of the artists’ mutual respect. To collaborate, then, it is important to understand each other’s principles and positions accurately, plan carefully and work through differences, and approach the creation of the work with the aim of bringing out each other’s strengths.
That is how I see it, but it is easier said than done, and certainly not something that can be achieved so simply. You need a perspective that allows you to judge each person’s abilities calmly, and if you focus so much on highlighting others that you abandon your own identity, the collaboration loses its purpose. Collaboration is a difficult undertaking, but it also holds the potential to produce results far beyond anything you imagined. To realize collaborations of value, I hope to make a greater effort to understand other artistic fields more deeply and to build closer relationships with a range of artists.
—This concludes our interview with Shinsuke Okamoto. Thank you very much for your participation.