In 2018, as part of my job organizing Japanese performing arts events, I am preparing an English-language concert program for members of a koto organization who will be performing overseas. The document includes profiles of the organization’s leadership, including Composer A, which I compile from sources such as the organization’s official website. When reviewing the program with the musicians, I am surprised by their request that I omit the passage in which I refer to Composer A as an accomplished koto performer; they instead ask me to focus only on his training at prestigious conservatory-style composition programs in Japan and the United States. Why might masterful performance ability be understood as a liability when discussing a musician’s legacy? As I make the requested revisions, I am reminded of a comment one of the composition faculty had made during my master’s degree studies a few years earlier: when I inquired why more works by figures such as Tadao Sawai, a renowned performer of the koto in addition to a composer, were not included in graduate composition seminars, the faculty member replied that, as he primarily wrote for the koto, and given the relatively straightforward harmonic and formal nature of his works, Sawai could not really be thought of as a serious composer.

Overview

Focusing on the asymmetrical privileging of Japanese koto works by conservatory-trained “composers” over those created by music-makers deemed to be koto “performer-composers,” this chapter formulates a countercolonial approach to the Japanese music higher education curriculum, which has a predominantly Euro-North American genealogy. The idea of the “colonial” in Japan is particularly fraught, given the history of Japan both as a colonizing power within Asia and the U.S. military’s longstanding presence in the archipelago. Japan’s foremost institutes of music higher education have their roots in the late nineteenth century, when they were established with the aim of introducing European- and American-style music education as part of the imperial government’s nation-building project (Ishii, Shiobara, and Ishii 2005).

Epistemic continuities from the imperial period remain widely evident in Japan’s K-12 music classes and music teacher training: the types of musical practice introduced early in Japan’s imperial history, choral singing and wind ensemble, remain two central pillars of primary and secondary music education today (Chiba 2007; Eppstein 1987). Conversely, genres of music with roots in premodern Japan, such as the music of kabuki theater, the koto, the shakuhachi, and more, occupy a particularly marginalized space in music curricula, even as they remain an intriguing resource for composers seeking to highlight Japanese identity on an ever-globalizing musical stage. Drawing from the work of Indigenous music scholar Dylan Robinson (2020), I argue that contemporary compositional approaches to Japanese instruments often represent an extractive form of knowledge production. In what ways are aspiring composers in Japan “oriented” (Ahmed 2006) toward Japanese instruments during their time at music colleges and arts universities? How might the curricular “affordances” (DeNora 2000) of Japanese institutions continue to uphold colonial priorities, and how might we re-orient aspiring composers toward richer, more deeply engaged countercolonial practices? And what implications do these questions have for the ways in which the works of performer-composers are approached in areas of the global musical academy outside Japan?

In this paper, using historical and autoethnographic approaches, I highlight the ways in which colonial approaches remain evident in composer training at Japanese institutes of higher education by centering the disjuncture between two groups that Bonnie Wade (2014) has insightfully described as “composers” and “performer-composers.” The former are typically academy-trained musicians, often with a strong knowledge in symphony orchestra and piano composition, while the latter tend to be

individual[s] whose musical creativity is informed first and foremost by their competence and situatedness as a performer. Most of them discussed here are based in some sphere of traditional music— players of the koto (a kind of long zither, traditionally with thirteen strings) such as Tadao Sawai, for instance (Wade 2014:2)

The divide remains deeply entrenched: as reflected in the opening autoethnographic passage, while some composers first trained on Japanese instruments may consider themselves to have transcended the composer/performer-composer binary, it is virtually unheard of for their work to be included in conservatory composition curricula today. Composers renowned for writing for both Japanese and symphony orchestra instruments, such as Kōsaku (Kôsçak) Yamada (1886–1965), Tōru Takemitsu (1930–1996), and Minoru Miki (1930–2011), all trained first in historically European approaches to sound before later taking up Japanese instruments in their work as a comparatively specialized domain.

The koto provides a particularly helpful case study for considering the relationship between composers and performer-composers. Arguably the most-widely integrated Japanese instrument in formal music education at all levels (though its place in Japanese music education is still marginal), a large number of influential conservatory-trained composers such as Minoru Miki, Akira Ifukube, and Toshi Ichiyanagi have written for the instrument. Despite the koto’s relative proximity to the world of conservatory-style musical training, however, aside from a small handful of performers focused primarily on avant-garde works, koto concerts and studio teaching remain largely dominated by the works of performer-composers. I understand this disparity as a tacit critique of conservatory-trained composer approaches to the instrument: while an understanding of range, performance technique, and possible tunings may allow composers to write music that is technically playable on the koto, composing a work with longevity provides much more of a challenge. As one koto teacher noted in a conversation regarding most works by conservatory-trained composers for the instrument: “those pieces are played once, and never again.”1

As formal music education took root in Japan, the koto came to be both figuratively and literally “de-voiced:” on a metaphorical level, performers of Japanese instruments were increasingly excluded from music education policy and from institutes of music higher education throughout most of the twentieth century. On a textural level, meanwhile, under the newly dominant Euro-American epistemic hegemony, in which the symphony orchestra represented the pinnacle of musical achievement, ensemble works for the koto shifted from the vocal-instrumental style that had been the standard until the twentieth century toward large-scale “pure music” ensemble works, or to virtuosic solo works written in a highly chromatic idiom. Stripped of the contextual knowledge afforded by close engagement with an instrument’s historical canon, framing of Japanese instruments in conservatory-style music education today tends toward extractive approaches: how can I get the kinds of sounds I want out of this instrument? Conversely, what types of scales, modes, extended techniques, or other sounds might be mined out of them for inspiration?

While conservatory-trained composers taking up the challenge of writing for the koto may successfully write works that are consistently programmed by a small number of performers, particularly those who are dedicated to the mastery of five-line staff notation, it ignores the much broader trend of decline in the overall number of performers and instrument makers evident in the world of the koto, as well as other premodern Japanese performing arts.2 Far from an inexhaustible fount of musical resources, the koto is in a precarious position in the twenty-first century. Furthermore, the skill of performer-composers, both contemporary and historical, remains largely unacknowledged in both K-12 music classes and in composer training at the tertiary level. These issues have significant implications for composer training well beyond the Japanese academy: how can countercolonial approaches be applied to musical training worldwide? How can composers be more closely engaged with, and aware of the vulnerabilities facing communities of instrumental performance practice? Beyond the world of Japanese instruments, what implications do these conversations have even for symphony orchestra instruments whose solo competition, pedagogical, and sometimes even concerto repertoire arguably remains primarily the domain of “performer-composers,” such as the harp, some wind and brass instruments, and percussion?

I seek to highlight three key methods by which music institutions can de-center extractive approaches to Japanese instruments in music curricula: by elevating the work of Japanese musicians heretofore marginalized with the “performer-composer” label; by encouraging composers to pursue a deeper engagement with Japanese instruments’ historical canon; and finally by reframing the act of composition in a dialogic, community-focused way that considers the long-term sustainability and marginalized position of Japanese instruments in contemporary society. I intersperse these discussions with autoethnographic vignettes through which I seek to demonstrate my background and positionality with regard to musical training and performance in a variety of contexts within Japan.

I am performing piano to accompany the faculty and staff choir during a Culture Day event at a junior high school in rural Japan, where I am working as a visiting English teacher. The key event of Culture Day is a large-scale concert attended by families of students and community members. Each homeroom class of approximately thirty students sings as a choir, and one student from every group accompanies their classmates on the piano while another conducts. The faculty also learn one piece of repertoire to present, and this year, I have been invited by the music teacher to play as the staff accompanist. While piano accompaniment is a familiar form of musical practice from my church upbringing in North America, the style of the song is new to me: it is written in two-part harmony, with a relatively limited range and largely syllabic setting of a blandly inspirational text. I am also curious at the extensive time this activity receives in the music curriculum, as it is the primary focus of music classes for weeks leading up to Culture Day in early November.

The next year, after the annual rotation of staff within the school district, a new music teacher comes to my school. I have been taking lessons on the koto with a local teacher ever since I began this job, and I am pleasantly surprised to learn that the new music instructor has studied koto with the same teacher. Though I am initially excited about the possibility of joining the once-a-year koto workshop in some capacity, better developing my understanding of the instrument’s place in music education, the new music teacher seems busy and not particularly interested in musical collaboration; I begin to sense that her relationship to the koto is one of reluctant obligation, rather than enthusiasm. By contrast, she is passionate about preparing the extracurricular wind ensemble for participation in competitions. When discussing the koto with other staff members, their comments tend to center on concerns about the cost of the instruments’ acquisition and maintenance. The koto workshop passes without fanfare, evident to me only by the moments when the instruments are lined up in the hallways to clear out space in the music room. My focus at work remains primarily on English teaching, and I begin to prepare for a graduate composition program, having received a scholarship based on a proposal to write new works for Japanese instruments.

The colonial roots of contemporary music education in Japan

The development of classroom music education in Japan and its relationship to the emerging imperial political system have been widely discussed in both English-language (Wade 2014; Ishii, Shiobara, and Ishii 2005; Ogawa 1994; Berger 1987) and Japanese-language scholarship (Hanzawa 2009; Chiba 2007). Choral singing was understood as an “essential tool for unifying the Japanese people through the act of ‘singing together in Japanese’” (Tsukahara 2013:223). Although minor changes were made during the period of U.S. occupation following World War II, scholars have noted the significant continuities in the way music was framed in the pre- and postwar curriculum (Eppstein 1987). Little has changed with regards to premodern Japanese music’s place in the curriculum either, approaches which have tended toward lip service rather than substantial inclusion (Sagawa 2009; 2007), even as the current national music education guidelines from the Japanese Ministry of Education highlight the significance of “getting a sense of the value of, and coming to develop a love for, the traditional music of [students’] country and their hometown.”3 One of the great ironies of twentieth-century Japanese music was the rejection of premodern Japanese genres by some composers, such as Tōru Takemitsu (1995), based on their presumed association with ultranationalist right-wing sentiment, even as the musical styles most closely linked to Japanese territorial expansion, colonial education, and military violence derived from Euro-American ensembles and their associated forms: gunka (military songs), kōshinkyoku (marches), and shōka (school choral songs).

Japan’s role as a colonial power in Asia also contributed to the spread of extractive musical epistemology far beyond the Japanese archipelago. The role of Japan’s music education system in the empire’s colonial territories, as well as in the broader East Asian context, has been the subject of increasing scholarly inquiry in recent decades. Notably, Shūji Isawa, one of the key figures in developing the early imperial Japanese government’s approaches to music, went on to become a significant figure in the Japanese colonial administration of Taiwan (Howe, Lai, and Liou 2014). The songbooks and pedagogical singing style developed in Japan also had a significant influence on music education in Korea (Chang 2018) and China (Tsukahara 2013). The ripple effects of the Japanese empire’s approach to music are broadly evident today: in spite of extensive conversations about the role of premodern musics in formal music education throughout East Asia, contemporary approaches continue to implicitly link training in Euroclassical styles with progression or modernity, while autochthonously-developed premodern idioms, though often understood as containing symbolic value as representations of nation or local identity, remain a specialized and minor domain. While this paper takes the impact of colonial epistemologies on Japan’s contemporary music higher education as its primary focus, parallel developments in other global regions occupied or influenced by the Japanese empire remain an important area for future scholarship, particularly considering what might be understood as similarly extractive approaches in the work of conservatory-trained composers to Korean and Chinese instruments.

Now a composition student in a master’s degree program in Japan, I have traveled several hours across the country to meet with an influential composer for a private lesson. The meeting has been specially arranged by my advisor, and I nervously arrive at the venue well before the necessary time, excited not only because of the composer’s extensive knowledge of the work of Tōru Takemitsu, but because of his widespread use of compositional approaches inspired by the textures of historical Japanese genres. I have prepared a copy of the score of a duet I recently composed for koto and shakuhachi, taking care to also bring multiple formats – CD and USB drive – of a recording of the piece. The composer waves away the recording, however. After a brief time spent flipping through the score, he remarks that he doesn’t understand why any composer would ever choose to write for the thirteen-string koto (which only has five notes per octave in historical tunings) when other models with more strings were available, which allow for far more chromatic writing. I was uncertain how to respond, as the thirteen-string koto, the instrument’s oldest and by far most widely-performed variety, was the one most commonly used by my koto player classmates and friends, and on which the majority of my koto training had been centered. After a conversation during which we discussed the work of Tōru Takemitsu, the composer kindly offered me the opportunity to watch the rehearsal for a concert of his music for orchestra that would be happening later that day. I observe the rehearsal with a deepening sense of alienation, frustrated by the dissonant, high-modernist sound, and increasingly unsure about my future as a composer.

De-voicing the koto in twentieth-century Japan

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the imperial political system transformed Japanese society in a variety of domains, performers of Japanese instruments undertook a reimagining of their respective genres. The early imperial period saw the elevation and codification of certain genres, particularly gagaku ceremonial and courtly music, given its close relationship to the emperor and to religious ritual (Tsukahara 2013). Conversely, performers of instruments such as the koto and shakuhachi faced significant changes to longstanding patronage models. The guild that had long been the stronghold of koto musicians, as well as other professions widely associated with blind men, was disbanded in the 1860s along with the samurai-centered feudal bakufu government. In the following decades, the koto would come to be framed both by performers and by bureaucrats as one of the Japanese instruments most closely aligned with the ideals of the newly-imported Euroclassical model of the composer (Flavin 2010). Players of the end-blown shakuhachi bamboo flute, an instrument that is today widely played alongside the koto, were also forced to make similar adaptations (Day 2013). The changes to the koto and shakuhachi repertoire would include the importation of Euroclassical form and harmony, a reduced focus on the role of the voice, and eventually an increase in ensemble size more closely aligned with the European symphony orchestra.

In 1961, conservatory-trained Japanese composer Ikuma Dan (1961:203) penned an English-language essay in which he lamented premodern Japanese music’s “dependence on literature,” referring specifically to the crucial role vocal song played in the vast majority of historical Japanese genres. He argued that while “keyboard instruments in Europe facilitated the vigorous development of pure instrumental music and polyphony” Japanese music remained “within the narrow confines of the solo voice, with its limited possibilities” (ibid.:207). This harsh assessment of Japanese vocal musics dovetails with the negative descriptions of Japanese song expressed by a range of visitors to Japan from Europe and North America: Ury Eppstein's (2007) extensive collection of quotes by travelers, missionaries, and visiting scholars demonstrates the deep vitriol for the country’s vocal music expressed by outsiders, using words such as “torture,” “discord,” “screeching,” and “harsh.” The negative assessment of Japanese vocal styles by conservatory-trained composers such as Dan contributed to the instruments’ “de-voicing,” which is widely evident today: most new works composed for the koto do not include vocal melodies. In 1961, at the time of publication of Dan's essay, conservatory-trained composers in Japan may still have been exposed to vocal-instrumental koto works in some contexts, at least enough to be familiar with the general style if not its particulars. Today, many composers are shocked to learn that vocal-instrumental works for the koto exist at all, let alone that they form the bedrock of the historical koto canon – including, embarrassingly, myself, after more than a year of koto study.

The de-voicing of the koto did not happen solely in the world of conservatory-trained musicians, however. As koto and shakuhachi players more closely aligned the instrument with the ideals of Euroclassical composition, koto performer-composers began to write a greater number of instrumental works. Miyagi Michio (1894–1956) cemented his role as one of the country’s preeminent koto masters through his groundbreaking compositions, incorporating European approaches to melody, phrasing, form, and harmony. Today, nearly a century after its composition, his award-winning 1929 work Haru no umi remains arguably the most well-known work for Japanese instruments today. The duet for shakuhachi and koto, with no vocal melody, can be heard in restaurants, department stores, and television during the new year holiday; even Japanese residents who do not know the name of the work or the composer are likely to be familiar with the piece’s arpeggiated opening passage. The work uses call-and-response phrases of regular length, clear meter, and an approach to voice leading and accompaniment that more closely parallels homophonic piano accompaniment than heterophonic simultaneous melodic variation characteristic of premodern koto works. Miyagi also composed a range of innovative vocal-instrumental works for the koto and other Japanese instruments, including those sung in multi-part harmony, but the work for which he remains most widely known today is that which exemplifies the new ideals of twentieth-century composition: Haru no umi. Absent the voice as well as the three-string plucked shamisen lute long associated with the koto, however, and therefore stripped of the range of pitch material afforded by the vocal and shamisen lines, the koto can easily be misunderstood as a frustratingly simple instrument, with only thirteen strings, typically tuned pentatonically. In order to facilitate greater chromaticism in new koto works, the twentieth century saw the development of koto with increasing numbers of strings, from the seventeen-string bass model developed and popularized by Miyagi to twenty-one and twenty-five-string models available today.

Additionally, the lack of awareness of the role of the voice in koto music risks flattening the distinctive features of different historical performance styles. Koto are typically performed with three removable picks placed on the thumb, index, and middle fingers of the right hand, and the shape of these picks differs depending on the performer’s particular lineage, broadly separated into Yamada-style (rounded picks) and Ikuta-style (square picks). In his influential work Composing for Japanese Instruments, composer Miki Minoru notes only that “each has distinctive merits, but the rounded [picks] are ineffective for tremolos.” (2008:129) The reason for the pick difference is in fact the central significance of the vocal melody in Yamada-style repertoire: the rounded picks are said to produce a gentler sound which allows clearer focus on the voice (Tsuriya 2018). This is also the reason why Yamada-style players sit directly facing the instrument rather than an angle, since their music avoids making use of accidentals on the low strings as bending at the waist interferes with singing (ibid.). Ikuta-style players, by contrast, began to develop longer and longer tegoto instrumental interludes between vocal passages throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, placing them in a particularly advantageous position for twentieth-century music epistemologies that would place a high value on instrumental “pure music.”

During my master’s degree studies in Japan, I am invited to sit for photos for the annual school catalog. As I am currently the only full-time graduate student in composition, I have been chosen to represent the composition and theory department. The photographer instructs me to sit at the piano with blank five-line staff paper on the music rack. I am photographed with my left hand on the keyboard, my right poised with the tip of a pencil pressed against the paper as I lean forward in the simulation of writing. Perusing the catalogs and application materials for a number of other music colleges and arts universities throughout Japan, I note the similar way in which so many composition departments are represented visually: with students seated alone at the piano, staff paper in front of them. In some photos, a professor of composition points over the composition student’s shoulder toward the sheet music on the piano – to my amusement, two different institutions use nearly identical versions of this staging in their visual storytelling.

In preparing this paper, I consult the most recent catalog issued by the Tokyo University of the Arts to see if the ways in which composers are represented have changed in the past few years. Two ostensible student composers are featured sitting in front of a large mixing board in what is likely a recording studio, while a third figure, probably a composition faculty member, sits in front of multiple laptops (though an upright piano remains visible in the background).

Future pathways

In a conservatory-based musical environment where encounters with performers of Japanese instruments are scarce, and where opera, choir, wind band, symphony orchestra, and electronic musics remain the central focus of composer curricula, how might educators reimagine the role of Japanese musics in formal education? To some, outright ignoring Japanese historical musics may seem preferable to approaches that have been critiqued as “appropriative” or “extractive.” Dylan Robinson’s work is especially helpful in highlighting the ways in which the framing of Indigenous musics as natural resources ready to be extracted upholds settler-colonial ontologies. However, rather than arguing for a partitioning of the Indigenous and classical music worlds, Robinson instead states that

[t]o challenge settler colonial perception requires reorienting the form by which we share knowledge, the way we convey the experience of sound, song, and music. In an academic setting, this involves reorienting the normative places, flows, and relationships wherein we share this knowledge. (2020:15)

My goal in citing Robinson’s work here is not to argue for an exact equivalence between the marginalization of premodern Japanese musics and the musics of First Nations peoples: the Japanese empire also contributed to the loss of Indigenous life and knowledge through colonial expansion, and the practice of the koto in Japan has never been threatened with outright suppression or violence.4 Instead, it is to highlight epistemological similarities between the settler colonial practices that shaped both contemporary North American and Japanese music education structures and, further, to imagine new ways of approaching composer training. I am also inspired by scholars from the Crossroads Section for Diversity and Inclusion in the Society for Ethnomusicology, who argue for “a radical politics of care” (Romero et al. 2023:2) in music scholarship and education. How might conservatory-trained composers approach performers with an ethics of care? How might composition faculty manifest similar care toward their students?

Elevating the work of composer-performers

What place might koto composer-performers have in the contemporary Japanese curriculum? David Pacun aptly describes the widespread assessment by anglophone scholars of early twentieth-century Japanese music as “[d]isplaying ample ‘craftsmanship’ but relying on traditional Western forms, interwar yōgaku [roughly, Japanese music composed in a Euro-American style] is thus imitative, a failed stage in the search for an ‘authentic’ Japanese compositional style.” (2012:5) While Pacun is primarily referring to the work of conservatory-trained composers such as Rentaro Taki (1879–1903), Kōsaku Yamada (1886-1965), and Shinpei Nakayama (1887–1952), similarly negative assessments have been made of their contemporaries working from the “other direction,” writing primarily for Japanese instruments but seeking to incorporate Euroclassical form or harmony. Music historian Eta Harich-Schneider argues that musical creativity in premodern Japanese genres had, by the mid-twentieth century, reached a standstill: “Very few scholars will take a sober standpoint and accept the real situation: namely, that Japan’s artistic activity and creativity has already become part of the modern world.” (1973:597) This echoes assessments made a decade earlier by ethnomusicologist William Malm regarding new works for nagauta, the incidental music of kabuki theater:

The great problem that nagauta composers face today is how to separate the essentials of their music from the hackneyed elements and create a new music exploiting fresh ideas set within the matrix of these essentials […] At present there is no indication that anyone is deeply aware enough of the problem to struggle with it. (Malm 1963:218)

What might it mean to treat the work of Japanese performer-composers navigating unfamiliar musical idioms as innovative and aesthetically significant, rather than as poor imitations or unsuccessful hybrids? Miyagi Michio’s 1929 work Haru no umi, mentioned in the previous section, is a helpful example. Miyagi’s foundational training was firmly grounded in the premodern koto style, and his earliest compositions reflect approaches that are standard in the koto historical canon: the use of classical poetry as text, interspersed with instrumental interludes; phrases of uneven length; tempo that fluctuates over the course of a work; and heterophonic voice-leading, among others. Haru no umi, by contrast, is markedly informed by Euroclassical compositional approaches. From the perspective of contemporary listeners, Haru no umi might, in uncharitable listenings, be described as a formally predictable, harmonically unadventurous style study. Reconsidering the work in its historical context opens space for a new assessment: how did Miyagi adapt compositional techniques, such as rondo form, that were part of a musical syntax radically different from the one in which he was initially trained? How did he innovate the use of extended techniques and harmony on the koto? The work drew enormous praise at the time of the song’s publication, leading to awards and even a tour of Europe by the composer with violinist Renee Chemet. Today, it remains a staple of the New Year’s holiday in Japan. Miyagi is one example of how a reorientation in listening practice can open the space for reimagining hierarchies of “successful,” “authentic,” or “cosmopolitan” composers.

Encouraging a greater engagement with historical canons

One question composers might ask when approaching writing music for unfamiliar instruments is “what have these instruments historically done?” rather than “what can they do?” Minoru Miki’s Composing for Japanese Instruments (2008) provides a jumping-off point for the considerations I hope to raise here: while an excellent compositional resource, the organization and approach of the book, if not complemented with an engaged listening practice, risks upholding the epistemologies of conservatory-style music education. The book is organized into categories of winds, strings, and percussion, rather than into historical ensemble types; each instrument is presented with its possible range given on a five-line staff, with photographs and detailed descriptions of the materials used to make them, lists of available extended techniques and suggestions for their notation, and exhaustive charts of possible tunings, arpeggios, and harmonics. Side-by-side comparisons of instruments from various performing arts traditions, as with the Yamada and Ikuta-style picks above, might provide insight into their purely physical organological qualities, but not necessarily the stylistic reasons for such differences (or, conversely, the ways in which composers innovated within particular organological constraints).

A different mode of engagement would be to frame compositional practice as an act of learning from previous composers within the worlds of those instruments, rather than using schematics to develop an ostensibly complete knowledge of an instrument’s possibilities. The most effective way to do so is to mirror the ways in which performers learn about their instruments, by engaging teachers for referrals to significant repertoire, recordings, and insight into the reasons for compositional choices or stylistic formalisms. Such an approach does not necessarily require extensive time spent learning to perform the instrument, but rather a change in the mode of listening. Reference works such as Miki’s book mentioned above are a helpful complement to such approaches, but should not be seen as shortcut to compositional mastery.

Focusing on community

The phenomenon of pieces that are “played once, and never again” represents a situation in which composer and performer needs are fundamentally misaligned. My final suggestion toward a countercolonial approach to composer training is arguably the most important: a commitment to understanding not only the physical nature of instruments, but the social groups to whom they are connected. This includes performers, instrument-makers, audiences, and specialist scholars. A community-focused approach to composer training also recognizes the precarious space occupied by many composers themselves, and the isolation that frequently arises as the result of the contexts in which they are trained and work. Composers are typically one of the smallest specialist groups in conservatory-based music higher education spaces, and often compete with the repertoire of established (and even long-dead) figures for program space. In such contexts, the writing of music can easily become a credentialist endeavor, in which the accumulation of repeat performances, awards, and accolades becomes the primary marker of compositional achievement. By decentering the ability to write for the symphony orchestra as the foundational composer skill and instead emphasizing relationships with collaborators and instrumentalists, we can not only demarginalize instruments such as the koto, but also prioritize the wellbeing of composers by recognizing their work as relational and community-based, rather than as the product of rare, isolated genius.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Devon Osamu Tipp for their comments on an earlier version of this paper (as they insightfully noted, “We don’t tend to describe Bach as a performer-composer, after all!”) Thanks also to Minae Okazaki.

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