No.048 - Interview with Liberal Arts Communicator!　Yuki MITSUHIRA

Exploring the Links between Humans and Music through the History of Music Therapy

National Institutes for the Humanities (NIHU) conducts research into human culture from a variety of angles, aspiring toward conviviality between people and harmony between humans and the natural world. Moreover, in deepening our research into human culture, we feel that ongoing interactions between the sites of research an society more broadly are of paramount importance.

To this end, NIHU organizes a variety of research exchange events for the general public and trains liberal arts communicators tasked with facilitating two-way communication between researches and society.

What exactly is a liberal arts communicator? What sorts of activities do they develop? These are questions that we would like to begin to answer in this series.

October 1, 2019 marked the birth of the fifth liberal arts communicator in history. This wasYuki MITSUHIRA of the NIHU International Research Center for Japanese Studies. For this article, Ms. Mitsuhira, fresh from taking up her appointment, talked with us about her enthusiasm as a liberal arts communicator and her personal experience of the training involved.

We have heard that you specialize in the history of music therapy, but can you tell us about your research topic?

The history of how music has been used as a means of illness treatment and the promotion and maintenance of good health (i.e., music therapy) is very old and can be traced back to ancient times in both the Eastern and Western worlds. I am particularly interested in the history of music therapy in Japan. At the moment, I am exploring contemporary representations of music therapy interventions that were carried out at sites of medical practice between the Meiji and Showa prewar periods by analyzing medical records, nursing logbooks, records of practice, photographs, and other materials.

People often think that the origins of music therapy in Japan began after the Second World War with the reception of Western music therapy from places like the USA, but actually, in the Edo period, it was already being argued that music could be effective in preventative medicine as well as in the treatment of various diseases, and by the Meiji period, we can see that such interventions were being practiced in full swing!

Unfortunately, we currently don’t have many opportunities to talk about music therapy performed in the prewar period in Japan. My own belief, however, is that the actual situation of music therapy as it has been cultivated in Japan for so long and the learning that we can glean from the traces of our predecessors’ devotion to music therapy will be able to not only contribute in some small way to music therapy and medical treatment now and in the future, but also inform the way we think about the relationship between music and humans. That’s what I think about as I pursue my research.

Why did you become a liberal arts communicator?

One inspiration was an experience I had introducing the history of music therapy in Japan at a workshop I had engaged with previously with a reconstructed musical performance. I had added some performances in an attempt to make things easier to understand, and when the workshop performances were over, I received many comments from researchers in a variety of disciplines, as well as members of the general public, to the effect that “musical performance made it easier to understand the historical background much more realistically” and “I learned that studying the history of music therapy is more than just digging up the past, and hides clues that may lead to actual music therapy.” That got me interested in collaborating with medical professionals and musicologists to explore ways of applying the characteristics of the music therapy I uncovered from my historical research to current music therapy praxis.

That workshop taught me the importance of dialogue and dissemination to society, as well as collaboration with researchers in fields other than my own. At the same time, I felt keenly aware of the importance of two-way communication in which voices from society that arise after the dissemination of research to the community feed back into the research process itself. I also learned that humanities research, which tends to be limited to armchair research, has a huge potential that could also lead to making a contribution to society through repeated efforts at communication. From around that time, I began to feel a growing sense of wanting to learn more communication skills through research and a desire to be someone who would be able to contribute to not only my own field, but also the public recognition and deepening of humanities research itself, which is when I began aspiring to become a liberal arts communicator.

Also, the fact that I wanted to become a liberal arts communicator at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) was one of the reasons I applied to the open call for liberal arts communicators. Nichibunken is an institution that conducts many international, interdisciplinary, and extremely unique studies of Japanese culture. Thus, communicating the appeal of the research being conducted by Nichibunken staff in an easily comprehensible manner and finding ways to visualize the fruits of their research and give them back to society is an extremely educational and rewarding job for me as a researcher of Japanese culture.

I see. Your clarity of purpose and motivations as a liberal arts communicator have really come across.

NIHU coordinates a variety of skills training opportunities for liberal arts communicators. As a part of this offering, a skills training session in conjunction with Toppan Printing Co., Ltd. was held at the Printing Museum, Tokyo on November 7 and 8, 2019.

Tell us about your first impressions of the training session.

In this training session, we heard a wealth of stories on a wide variety of topics, from an introduction to digital archives and VR production to ideas for exhibitions at the Printing Museum, roles of organizational branding, as well as specific methods for PR activities.

In particular, the advice given on practical examples of collaboration with the community and effective dissemination methods using social media, as well as with regard to tips for creating appealing exhibitions really taught me a lot, and I feel that I came away with a lot of food for thought that I will be able take advantage of in future activities.

Yuki Mitsuhira (foreground) listening to concepts and tips for staging exhibitions at the Printing Museum

Personal experience of a “dynamic exhibition” in which museum visitors show other museum visitors their own attempts at letterpress printing

Finally, please tell us how you engage with your own work and activities in the future as a liberal arts communicator

I’m quite excited by the challenge of communicating Nichibunken’s institutional appeal and the attractions of research about Japanese culture in a direct way, while also always consuming information related to Nichibunken objectively as a reader and listener myself.

As for the history of music therapy, I will be exploring ways of disseminating the results of my research even more clearly. Also, the history of music therapy is a multidisciplinary area of research that straddles a wide range of fields, including medical and pharmaceutical history, musicology, folkloristics, religious studies, and the history of thought. Therefore, in collaboration with researchers in a variety of other fields in both the humanities and sciences, I’m hoping to search for approaches for building a “vibrant humanities” that will be useful in the real world.

I would also like to work on getting people interested in representations of Japan in Western music (musical Japonism), which is a topic I have been working on in parallel with my research into the history of music therapy. As a part of my involvement in Nichibunken’s Foreign Books Project, I have mainly been conducting research into old maps of Japan from the Western world and books by Western authors written about Japan in European languages from before the opening of Japan. In recent years, we have also begun collecting and studying Western works of music that were composed on the theme of Japan (i.e., representations of Japan in Western music) from the period around the time that Japan opened its borders to the world. In an era when information about Japan was much more limited than today, how did Westerners express the idea of Japan in music? And how was this interpreted by listeners? I’m hoping that such questions can provide new approaches for deepening our research on European historical materials and popular culture related to Japan.

Some of the Japonism-type musical scores in Nichibunken’s collection are already available in our database of ‘Rare Books and Maps on Japan in European Languages’. In particular, our collection of ‘1800s Music Scores’ and ‘ 1900s Music Scores’ is available online to browse or download so that they can also be used for actual performances. In addition, to provide more context for understanding these works, commentary and actual musical recordings of each piece will be posted on our website, The World of European Historical Materials on Japan. We will continue to work on adding to and expanding these websites and databases, so please check back often!

(Interviewer: Ayumi HOTTA)　

Yuki MITSUHIRA
completed her Ph.D. at the Department of Japanese Studies, School of Cultural and Social Studies, Graduate University for Advanced Studies. Before taking up her current appointment in October 2019, she served as a project researcher and institutional researcher at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. Her research interests include the history of music therapy, the history of medical culture, and representations of Japan in Western music (musical Japonism).