Baroque in Japan? From Jesuit missionaries to the concerts of the 1930s

With Bach Collegium Japan and numerous musicians active around the world, Japan is now recognized as a country of excellence in the performance of baroque music. Introduced in the 16th century by Jesuit missionaries, it disappeared after the country’s closure before re-emerging at the end of the 19th century. Here is a brief history of baroque music in Japan, from the arrival of hymns in 1549 to the first concerts of the 1930s.

Full history:

Part 1:
Baroque in Japan? From Jesuit missionaries to the concerts of the 1930s
Part 2:
Baroque in Japan? The contemporary Japanese scene

With the first hymns of the Jesuit missionaries in 1549, Western music made its appearance in Japan in the mid-16th century, carried by Christian evangelization. The policy of national seclusion, introduced in the 1630s to contain the spread of Christianity, almost entirely halted its diffusion. From 1868 onward, with the founding of the National Music School, it was first Western music as a whole that was reintroduced, within a military framework. Interest in early music, more specifically, gradually emerged: from the first harpsichord concert in 1908 to the radio broadcasts of Austria’s Schneider Trio in the 1930s, during which baroque music slowly took hold and aroused a curiosity destined to develop, as elsewhere, in the second half of the 20th century.

The isolationist policy of the 17th century

The history of early music in Japan begins with Christian evangelization in the 16th century. The Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier introduced hymns there in 1549; the Manuale ad Sacramenta ministranda, including several musical scores, was even printed there in 1605. This practice of collective singing, favoured by the missionaries, enabled rapid oral transmission among populations unfamiliar with the Latin liturgy. The practice of these chants, however, remained confined to hamlets around present-day Nagasaki. But the Japanese authorities, fearing that the Christian faith might serve as a prelude to Hispano-Portuguese colonization, quickly hardened their policy.

Unknown artist, probably a Japanese Christian painter, Saint Francis Xavier, 17th century? © Kobe City Museum

In 1612, Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa shogunate (the last feudal military government, from 1603 to 1867) and a central figure in the political unification of Japan, promulgated a decree ordering the eradication of Christianity. The country’s isolation policy, implemented in the 1630s, completely cut off the archipelago, leaving only a few scattered trade routes, notably with the Dutch in Nagasaki. The latter, being Protestant and considered less proselytizing, were allowed to trade from the artificial island of Dejima, the only regular point of contact with the West. Yet clandestine believers continued to pass on forbidden chants, gradually transforming them into local folklore. These communities, known as kakure kirishitan (“hidden Christians”), adapted texts and melodies to the point of creating hybrid forms, at the boundary between ritual and Japanese oral tradition.