Music Research Forum/CNCS - Dr Amanda Hsieh

From Hasegawa’s Terakoya to Weingartner’s Die Dorfschule: Listening to German-Japanese Relations through Opera

Abstract:

The Japanese publisher Hasegawa Takejirō produced exquisitely string-tied, crepe-paper books for the European and US markets at the turn of the twentieth century. These books were popular. The German-language version of the Terakoya (‘Village School’), for example, went through at least eight editions and was picked up by composers such as Carl Orff and Felix Weingartner. This talk takes Weingartner’s opera Die Dorfschule as a case study to examine Meiji- and Taishō-era Japan’s control of its representation to the outside world. Through it, I ask questions about the global production and circulation of culture, ideology, and power.