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Rethinking Iemoto:
eorizing Individual Agency in
the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū
Keisuke Yamada
Abstract: is article discusses issues of individual agency arising from previous schol-
arship on iemoto (家元) (headmaster) in Japanese performing arts. Extant literature
on the iemoto system has tended to view human action as mere enactment of rules
and standards. e article develops a theory of individual agency and then examines
the sociocultural practices of individuals associated with an iemoto school of tsugaru
shamisen music called Oyama-ryū. is article aims to facilitate an in-depth under-
standing and critical rethinking of the iemoto organization’s formative processes, trans-
formativity, and temporality as well as individual members’ projects and creativity.
Introduction
It is almost unthinkable to discuss the social dimensions of cultural prac-
tices of traditional Japanese performing arts, such as the tea ceremony, ower
arrangement, musical genres, theater, dance, and martial arts, without con-
sidering the power of iemoto and ryūha (school). Indeed, a large body of
English- language literature on these Japanese performing arts has discussed
iemoto systems and schools in a variety of case studies since the late 1960s
(Ortolani 1969; Weisgarber 1968). An iemoto has been represented as a head-
master of a ryūha who holds authority to strictly control sociocultural prac-
tices of its members. An iemoto, for instance, controls members’ performance
techniques and produces repertoires, which are oen kept secret from those
outside her or his organization (Morinaga 2005). In addition, an iemoto pre-
serves her or his position at the top of its hierarchical pyramid.
e word iemoto can be divided into two kanji characters: ie (家) (house,
household, family) and moto (元) (origin). e iemoto exemplies the familis-
tic social systems in Japan, so the topic of the iemoto system has attracted
certain academic attention in disciplines even outside the humanities (Hsu
1975; Kawashima 1957; Nishiyama 1982a, 1982b). Discourses on the familis-
tic social systems (Fukutake 1962, 1982; Nakane 1970, 1972) have provided
theoretical frameworks through which to examine iemoto organizations in
dierent cultural contexts. ese theoretical frameworks put their impor-
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 29
tance on social unity and tend to ignore individuality, such as individual per-
sonalities, creativity, and dierences. e absolute obedience of individuals
to the family is essential for the sake of maintaining its performative unity.
ese notions have inuenced the later scholarly understanding of iemoto
(Hahn 2007; Heine 1995; Keister 2004; Lande 2007; Moore 2012; Morinaga
2005; Pecore 2000; Read and Locke 1983; Waseda 2008). Scholars have criti-
cized the iemoto system as an impediment to the development of performing
arts in Japan (Nishiyama 1982b).
is article, however, problematizes the common understanding of iemoto
organizations as feudalistic, static, clandestine, and opposed to individuality
(Nishiyama 1982a, 1982b). It is particularly problematic for us to look at our
diverse cases through such outdated, monolithic, and limited conceptions of
iemoto. I aim to contribute to the existing scholarship on iemoto a theoretical
framework for analyzing sociocultural practices of individuals belonging to
iemoto organizations. I develop a theory of individual agency that enables us
to view an iemoto organization as being made up of a set of individuals with
the capacity not only to act purposively and creatively but also to remake ex-
isting social and cultural congurations. is theoretical framework can also
be used to closely look at individual members’ eorts, even their struggles, to
keep their musical activities alive in the world of Japanese performing arts
today. is article aims to generate spaces for critically thinking about and
examining diverse forms of iemoto organizations and individual members’
sociocultural practices—as well as to reevaluate the existing body of knowl-
edge on iemoto.
I rst discuss the previous scholarly understanding of iemoto, which is fol-
lowed by discussions of the theory of individual agency. en I present a case
study of tsugaru shamisen music culture in contemporary Japan, focusing
on two musical individuals from an iemoto school of tsugaru shamisen mu-
sic called Oyama-ryū—the founder of the school, Oyama Mitsugu (b. 1930),
and a member of the school, Oyama Yoshikazu (b. 1983). I analyze their so-
cial and musical practices based on the theoretical framework.
Iemoto in Context
e historical origin of the iemoto system has been contextualized within
the Edo feudal period, also known as the Tokugawa period (1603–1867).
Nishiyama Matsunosuke (1982a, 14) traces an early use of the term to 1757
from a document by writer and storyteller Baba Bunkō (1718–58), though he
additionally notes that similar social systems already existed in the elds of
Japanese poetry and gagaku (Japanese court music) during the Heian period
(794–1185). In addition to the world of performing arts, the samurai class and
30 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
Buddhist temples in the premodern era adopted similar systems (see ibid.,
6–21). Nishiyama mentions that during the period ruled by the Tokugawa
family, the iemoto system notably developed in various artistic elds such as
instrumental music, theater, poetry, tea ceremony, calligraphy, and ower ar-
rangement. e economic prosperity of this period provided a number of am-
ateurs with opportunities to study these kinds of performing arts as a way
of personal progress and self-development (Keister 2008). Nishiyama fur-
ther argues that although Japan experienced the Meiji Restoration in 1868,
which abolished the feudal system of the Tokugawa, these feudalistic but pri-
vate iemoto organizations continued to grow stronger (see Nishiyama 1982a,
22–24). I regard this contextualization of the initial growth of the iemoto sys-
tem within the larger frame of the Tokugawa political system as an important
explanation of why iemoto and feudality have been metaphorically associated
and continuously mentioned together in the existing scholarly writings on
iemoto.
A variety of humanities and social sciences disciplines in both Japanese-
and English-language scholarship have already created a rich body of work
on this guild system, specifying several key features: supreme authority of
the iemoto, master-disciple relationship, interlinking hierarchy, and ctional
family system (Hsu 1975; Kawashima 1957; Ortolani 1969; Smith 1998; Yano
1992). Nishiyama, for instance, outlines some typical exclusive rights of the
iemoto, such as to produce and revise repertoires; control performance tech-
niques, forms, and stage manners; select stage costumes; distribute profes-
sional stage names and teaching licenses; and monopolize income (1982a, 16;
see also Ortolani 1969, 299–300). In iemoto society, individual members are
not allowed to hold these rights. Because of these characteristics, Nishiyama
(1982a) labels iemoto organizations as feudalistic. Furthermore, Nishiyama
severely criticizes the iemoto system for having impeded the evolution of per-
formance traditions in Japan because of the strict rules and regulations that
may restrain the individuality of each group member (1982b, 269; see also
Kawashima 1957, 357–58; Ortolani 1969, 298; Read and Locke 1983, 27–28).
Nishiyama writes:
“Tradition” contains various meanings and denitions. Among them, one of the
most important is that it has to remain alive and fresh. “Tradition” is disparate
from items of cultural heritage preserved in a glass case in a museum.... But a
large hindrance preventing the ongoing renewal of their tradition is due to the
oppressive armor-clad warrior, namely, the iemoto system. (1982b, 269)
Even recent studies on iemoto (e.g., Keister 2004, 2008; Morinaga 2005; Pecore
2000; Waseda 2008) draw on the outdated conceptions of iemoto organiza-
tions as being feudalistic, static, homogeneous, and opposed to individuality.
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 31
An Alternative Perspective
Such old conceptions tend to overlook the vitality of individual actions that
actually brings about transformation of social structures. Nevertheless, the
scholarship has not yet problematized the top-down approach commonly ap-
plied to the previous studies of iemoto, which features the staticity of social
structure rather than the dynamism of individual practice. e conventional
understanding and interpretation of iemoto organizations as homogeneous,
static, and opposed to individuality, therefore, remain valid, authoritative,
and unchallenged. is interpretation is problematic since in the world of
Japanese performing arts, the attributes and functions of iemoto organiza-
tions have been perpetually changing throughout time.
Here I address several neglected questions in the previous scholarship on
iemoto: How can individuals newly form an iemoto school of certain kinds of
Japanese performing arts; that is, what settings enable them to establish and
continue running the iemoto school? Why are iemoto systems deemed neces-
sary to individual members of the school today? More important, how do we
come to know about this necessity? And how can we perceive creativity and
productivity in individual sociocultural practices and take notions of tempo-
rality and change, which are particularly lacking in Nishiyama and others’
works on iemoto, into consideration in the analysis of this subject?
To move beyond the conventional interpretation of iemoto, as well as to
answer these questions, this article attempts a new approach to the study of
iemoto, highlighting creative and purposive actions or agency of members
belonging to an iemoto organization. I view iemoto systems as made up of
an array of “resources” (Sewell 2005, 133–37); creative and purposive human
subjects or agents read and use the resources to establish their own artistic
styles and pursue their own objectives. us, I represent an iemoto organiza-
tion as consisting of a complex set of individuals with dierent socio cultural
backgrounds, knowledge, and personal projects. What is missing in the work
of Nishiyama is the possibility for agency among individuals belonging to
iemoto organizations. Individual agents have the capacity to act intention-
ally, purposively, and creatively and to reconstruct existing cultural practices,
forms, and congurations.
I rst outline a theory of individual agency and highlight individual
agency’s three types of capabilities: (1) to access and choose particular re-
sources, both human and nonhuman, available to them; (2) to read and learn
from these resources in their own ways; and (3) to creatively apply their “sche-
mas” (Sewell 2005, 133–37), or sets of rules, and reuse the resources in various
situations for enactment. e theorization of individual agency and the appli-
cation of that theory to the discussion provide a critical lens through which to
32 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
rethink iemoto. is attempt is aimed at facilitating an in-depth understand-
ing of iemoto organizations’ formative processes, transformativity, and tem-
porality as well as individual members’ projects and creativity.
Duality of Structure
In the social sciences, agency generally connotes individuals’ practices in
specic time-space settings. Anthony Giddens denes it as “the stream of
actual or contemplated causal interventions of corporeal beings in the on-
going process of events-in-the-world” (1993, 81). Agency, furthermore, al-
ways has a dialectical relationship with larger abstract sociocultural wholes,
namely, structure. Giddens’s theory of structuration deals with this dialecti-
cal relationship between structure and agency: “[S]tructure is both medium
and outcome of the reproduction of practices” (1979, 5). Contrary to agency,
which is located in a specic place and time, from Giddens’s (1993) point of
view, structure has no such specic spatiotemporal location. He compares
this structure-agency relation with Ferdinand de Saussure’s langue-parole
(language- speech) relation in linguistics. In Saussurean linguistics, langue
is the abstract structure of language, which is distinct from parole, the con-
crete instantiation of the structure in actual speech or written form. Besides
Giddens, some other thinkers working on this so-called practice theory (e.g.,
Bourdieu 1977; Ortner 2006; Sewell 2005) have also tried to dene struc-
ture. In this article, I complicate the prevailing understanding of structure by
identifying two dimensions of it—the cognitive and the physical. In doing so,
I challenge the conventional view that structure aects all members of a soci-
ety in the same way. Instead, each individual possesses her or his own struc-
tures, which are, nevertheless, perpetually remodeled.
Some social theorists believe that structure informs agents not just what
to do but how to perform “properly” in specic social settings and contexts.
ese theorists view it as a mental guideline and a motivation for people’s
social lives. Individuals do refer to certain rules when they act in such sit-
uations. Cliord Geertz, for instance, argues that there exist “conceptual
structures that inform ... subjects’ acts” (1973, 27). But I do not believe that
“conceptual structures” are shared among all members of a society. Instead,
each possesses schemas, which are kept in their drawers of knowledge, that
can be manifested by means of enactment. I call this cognitive side of struc-
ture “schema.” An agent’s schema is not stable or synchronic but rather per-
petually growing so long as she or he continues learning in social settings. I
then ask: How can these schemas be reconstructed or remodeled? e answer
hinges on the other aspect of structure.
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 33
When thinking about developmental processes of human thought, I re-
fer to Geertz: “[C]ultural resources are ingredient[s] ... to human thought”
(1973, 83). Indeed, any form of cultural resource—either Pierre Bourdieu’s
“world of objects” (1977, 91) or William Sewell’s “human” and “nonhuman
resources” (2005, 133)—can be models for social behavior, activities, and re-
ality, and individuals can learn something from them. ey can augment
their stocks of knowledge and cultivate a certain kind of cultural mind-set
and consequently reconstruct their cognitive side of structure. Sherry Ortner
similarly argues, “Cultures are public systems of symbols and meanings, texts
and practices, that both represent a world and shape subjects in ways that t
the world as represented” (2006, 116). e physical side of structure is made
up of these resources, both human and nonhuman, that are always situated
in specic time-space settings. Whereas schemas are webs of rules “with a
purely virtual existence,” resources are instantiations or embodiments of
schemas and “media and outcomes of operation of structure” existing in
space and time (Sewell 2005, 135). All individuals are surrounded by these
resources and continue accessing, encountering, and accumulating new re-
sources in their social lives. Hence, I characterize the structure as always be-
ing in a state of change and thus something temporal, rather than something
xed, static, and nontemporal.
Individual Agency
In many works that deal with practice theory, the term “agency” is usually
associated with such expressions as “enactment,” “creativity,” “subjectivity,”
“intentionality,” “power,” and “project.” In Anthropology and Social eory,
Ortner oers her own denition of agency, particularly focusing on its dual
“faces” (2006, 129–53). She argues that agency is about “intentionality and the
pursuit of projects” and “the exercise of or against power” (ibid., 139). Discus-
sions of agency always involve “intentions” since “action is cognitively and
emotionally pointed toward some purpose” (134, emphasis in original). Like-
wise, Anthony Giddens utilizes “project” to mean long-term ambitions and
“intention” for the motivation of actions carried out during day-to-day prac-
tices, both of which serve as important expressions in dening agency (1993,
82–84). He emphasizes that an agent is to a certain extent knowledgeable
about the conduct of her or his daily life and uses this knowledge—schema—
to produce certain quality or outcome in it (Giddens 1993, 83).
Sewell pays particular attention to the creativity of human agency. He de-
nes agency as “entailing the capacity to transpose and extend schemas to
new contexts” and writes that “[c]reative cultural action commonly entails
34 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
the purposeful or spontaneous importation of meanings from one social lo-
cation or context to another” (Sewell 2005, 141, 168). Individuals are, in other
words, creative agents in the sense that they are capable of applying their own
sets of schemas—as the cognitive side of structure—to dierent social set-
tings and situations for the production of cultural resources that are to be
drawn on by others. ese resources then become available and accessible to
others who bring in their own interpretations. Sewell further argues, “Agency
... is the actor’s capacity to reinterpret and mobilize an array of resources in
terms of cultural schemas other than those that initially constituted the ar-
ray” (ibid., 142–43, emphasis added). is point made by Sewell has particu-
larly moved me to propose here that an agent’s sociocultural roles can consist
not only of an “actor” but also of an “audience,” “listener,” and “reader” of any
forms of cultural texts.
In the discussion of agents’ roles as active and productive “readers,” I high-
light their capacities to access and accumulate physical resources and to read
these resources in their own ways for the cultivation of the schemas, a com-
bination of which connotes and practically results in, to borrow Giddens’s
(1979, 1993) central term, “structuration”—the making and remaking of so-
cial and cultural congurations. It is important to note that agents are con-
tinuously accessing, encountering, and accumulating new cultural resources
and remodeling their structures either intentionally or contingently. An
agent’s physical structure depends on her or his sociocultural contexts. In
Sein und Zeit, Martin Heidegger writes, “Looking at something, understand-
ing and conceiving it, choosing, [and] access[ing] it ... are modes of Being”
(1962, 26). is explanation would be applicable to an individual agent: Look-
ing at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing it, and access-
ing it are all modes of agency. e ways cultural resources are understood,
conceived, and interpreted thus hinge on individual agents’ perceptions. is
“reading” is an essential way to cultivate their cognitive side of structure, that
is, their own applicable set of schemas.
us, individual agents have capacities (1) to choose and accumulate phys-
ical resources (both human and nonhuman) available around them, (2) to
read and learn from them in their own ways, and (3) to creatively apply their
schemas and reuse these resources in various situations for enactment. In this
framework, each individual agent is situated at the center of the formative
processes of producing cultural resources.
e following two cases feature musical individuals or agents in an iemoto
school of tsugaru shamisen music called Oyama-ryū: the founder of the
school, Oyama Mitsugu, and a member of the school, Oyama Yoshikazu. I
apply the theory of individual agency to each case, particularly focusing on
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 35
agents’ projects as motivations to change existing cultural forms and prac-
tices and creativity utilized to pursue their projects. is study includes data
and information obtained through my eld research, which took place in
multiple locations in Japan. From November 2012 to August 2014, I stud-
ied the sociomusical practices and activities of individuals associated with
the Oyama-ryū, which was founded in Tokyo in 1963—with the initial name
of Kōei-kai. During the summer of 2015, I conducted a number of inter-
views with musicians belonging to the Oyama-ryū, including the son of its
founder and current iemoto, Oyama Mitsugu II (b. 1957), and the founder
of the Nitta-ryū—another iemoto school of tsugaru shamisen music based
in the city of Sapporo—Nitta Hiroshi (b. 1951), and his son, Nitta Masahiro
(b. 1984). I have also collected primary and secondary sources that describe
the history of tsugaru shamisen music, along with music scores and CDs that
these schools and their members have already produced. e theory of indi-
vidual agency sheds new light on the analysis and interpretation of ethno-
graphic data on the practices of individuals associated with iemoto schools.
Oyama Mitsugu’s Agency and Projects
I examine cultural settings that, starting around the 1960s, enabled shamisen
player Oyama Mitsugu, from the rural Tsugaru district in northern Japan, to
establish his own school based on the iemoto systems aer moving to the cap-
ital city, Tokyo. is urban cultural setting enabled Mitsugu to access a vari-
ety of new resources and to establish the iemoto school by inventing a large
ensemble style and developing notation systems in the tsugaru shamisen mu-
sic tradition. ese innovations contributed to the development of tsugaru
shamisen music in its historical context; tsugaru shamisen was recognized as
a new musical genre and experienced a large-scale boom from the mid-1950s
to the 1970s, stimulated by the postwar reinvigoration of national interest in
Japanese cultural products (Peluse 2005, 75).
Tsugaru Shamisen from Rural to Urban Areas
and the Formation of the Oyama-ryū
Unlike, for example, nagauta and jiuta—two forms of Japanese “classical”
music (hōgaku) originating during the Tokugawa period (formerly Edo) and
developed in urban areas of Tokyo and the Kyoto and Osaka regions, respec-
tively—tsugaru shamisen music developed as part of min’yō (folk song) tradi-
tion in Tsugaru. Several scholars such as Daijō Kazuo (1995), Gerald Groemer
(1999), and Henry Johnson (2006) have attempted to trace its origin back to
the Tsugaru district in the late nineteenth century in which blind musician
36 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
beggars called bosama traveled around the area along with their shamisen
and shakuhachi. Bosama performed regional folk songs in exchange for food
and money as a way to make their living, which is called kadozuke (literally,
attached to the gate). “Tsugaru shamisen players were looked down upon be-
cause they were poor,” Johnson (2006, 86) writes. As Jay Keister (2008, 254)
also notes, min’yō in general has been represented as vulgar music by scholars
and looked down on by hōgaku musicians (see also Hughes 2000, 32).
In the early years of the twentieth century, these blind itinerant musicians
frequently appeared at local songfests (uta-kai) in such venues as farmers’
houses, small theaters, local meeting halls, and temporary stages at shrine
festivals and established their reputations (see Groemer 1999, 44–46). Since
1910, Nihon Chikuonki Shōkai (Japan Record Company; later renamed
Nippon Columbia) began to make recordings of Japanese min’yō, which later
became broadly available to the Japanese public. A newspaper company in
the Aomori prefecture called Tōō Nippō has sponsored large min’yō compe-
titions since 1934 to oer “solace and amusement to the people of the prefec-
ture and to heighten their love of the local area” (ibid., 51; see also Hughes
2008, 121). e winners of the competitions—many of whom were others
besides blind beggars—gained recording contracts with companies such as
Victor and oen joined professional min’yō troupes to tour (jungyō) through-
out the country.
During World War II, tsugaru shamisen musicians who had strong connec-
tions with the recording industry suered and started to nd other temporary
jobs. Yet in 1946, right aer the war ended, Tōō Nippō resumed its min’yō
competition, and “[l]ocal music suddenly became a source of solace and a ba-
sis for re-establishing a sense of regional pride” (Groemer 1999, 61). During
the late 1950s, a number of those musicians from northern Japan, including
the Tsugaru district, started to move to Tokyo (oen called jōkyō, “moving to
a capital city”) to perform their regional folk songs in newly opened min’yō
sakaba (folk-song bars). It was a period of postwar high economic growth
(1955–73). e phenomenon of shūdan shūshoku (Kase 1997; Usui 2014, 112–
13)—the large group migration of young workers from rural areas to Tokyo
from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s—and the subsequent building boom
energized live music scenes in the capital city (Matsuki 2011,82).
Oyama Mitsugu was one of the earliest shamisen players in the Tsugaru re-
gion who moved to Tokyo and established himself as a professional musician
in the late 1950s. Just before moving, he had been working as a touring and
recording musician, besides keeping a farm as a side job. In 1958, the gen-
eral manager of Tōō Nippō Kudō Tomio asked Mitsugu to perform in one
of the newly opened min’yō sakaba called Kokeshi Honten, along with three
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 37
Tsugaru min’yō singers—Miura Setsuko, Satō Ritsu, and Takahashi Tsuya—
and a performer of teodori (dance with hand movements), Murakami Yūichi.
Mitsugu was the only shamisen accompanist in the bar at that time.
In the early 1960s, Mitsugu, as accompanist, was regularly performing at
another min’yō sakaba, Furusato, in Shibuya. By the time he founded Kōei-kai
in 1963, he had had several students and developed an idea of formi ng a tsugaru
shamisen ensemble, which is distinct from that of a typical min’yō perfor-
mance of Tsugaru and other Tohoku areas, in which a shamisen player mainly
provides accompaniment for singing and dancing. Mitsugu began practic-
ing with his students his own ensemble arrangement of a Tsugaru min’yō,
“Tsugaru Jongara Kyū-bushi.” is arrangement is included in the rst vol-
ume of his min’yō collection, Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama Mitsugu Min’yō-shū
(e Oyama Mitsugu min’yō collection) (1977), and has been played in such
social events as natori-shiken (name-taking examination) and the organiza-
tion’s annual concerts. His ensemble appeared in min’yō contests hosted, for
example, by Nihon Kyōdo Min’yō Kyōkai (Japan Local Folk Song Associa-
tion), which was formed in Tokyo in 1961. By 1970, Mitsugu had released four
LPs containing performances of his ensemble arrangements on the record la-
bel Teichiku. He also began to give stage names to his advanced students in the
1960s. Having one’s own performance style and repertoire and giving profes-
sional stage names with his family name Oyama are typical of iemoto society.
Based on the theoretical framework developed earlier in this article, cer-
tain questions arise: What settings enabled Mitsugu to make such innova-
tions in the tsugaru shamisen music tradition, which used to be the music of
blind itinerant beggars in rural northern Japan? What resources were avail-
able and accessible to him in Tokyo from the late 1950s through the 1960s?
How did he, as an individual agent, both purposely and contingently form
his structure at these moments? What did he then learn from these available
and accessible resources in order to cultivate his schema, which is to be en-
acted and applied in dierent situations and settings? According to the the-
ory of individual agency, each agent has her or his own projects as long-term
ambitions, as well as intentions in continuous everyday practices. What were
the long-term projects for Mitsugu? ese questions are important not merely
to show the formative processes of the iemoto organization per se in postwar
times but also to demonstrate that iemoto systems provide individual agents a
set of resources to be used to establish their own artistic styles and make their
living in the world of Japanese performing arts. erefore, I see iemoto orga-
nizations as always being in a state of change; the change occurs through in-
dividuals’ continuous attempts to develop their structures and apply them to
new situations.
38 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
Oyama Mitsugu’s Projects and Capacity to Change Structures
In my examination of Mitsugu’s formation of his iemoto school, I focus par-
ticularly on the ways he invented an ensemble style in the tsugaru shamisen
music tradition, developed notation systems, and produced volumes of his
min’yō collection Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama Mitsugu Min’yō-shū. In Tokyo,
Mitsugu encountered various musical styles that had been practiced in iemoto
organizations since Japan’s early modern times, and some of them directly
became incentives and models for his innovations. I briey explain Giddens’s
(1979) perspective on the concept of change before focusing on Mitsugu’s en-
counters with a variety of resources.
In the introductory chapter of Central Problems in Social eory, Giddens
introduces a “major theme” of the work: “the time-space relations inherent
in the constitution of all social interaction” (1979, 3). In his view, social sys-
tems are constantly constructed and reconstructed through the “knowledge-
able application and reapplication of rules and resources by actors in situated
social contexts” (ibid., 114). Change is intrinsic in every moment of such pro-
cesses of social production. He writes that “any and every change in a social
system logically implicates the totality and thus implies structural modica-
tion, however minor or trivial this may be” (114). e notion of change in
linguistics, for instance, illustrates this argument: “[M]odications in the
phonemic, syntactical or semantic character of words in language are eected
through and in language use, that is through the reproduction of language;
since language only exists in and through its reproduction, such modica-
tions implicate the whole” (114). is notion can also be applicable to cases
of any style of performing arts whose renditions are situated in specic time-
space settings, including the music of Tsugaru, and to studies of any social in-
stitution like iemoto schools.
Structural changes—either major or minor—occurred each time Mitsugu
encountered new cultural traditions in his musical career, attempted to learn
something from them, and applied the knowledge in situated social contexts.
For instance, when Mitsugu moved to Furusato in Tokyo, he had an oppor-
tunity to play music for a radio program and shared a stage with the founder
and iemoto of a nishimono shamisen school, Fujimoto Hideo (1923–2006).
On this occasion, Mitsugu saw—or read—Fujimoto and two other members
of the school playing in ensemble and found this style useful for and applica-
ble to the performance of tsugaru shamisen (Matsuki 2011, 83). Developing an
ensemble style in the tsugaru shamisen music tradition then became a long-
term project for Mitsugu.
A year or so aer he moved to Furusato, Mitsugu already had several stu-
dents. To invent an ensemble style in tsugaru shamisen music, he founded his
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 39
own musical organization, putting his students into a group and having them
practice his own arrangements of Tsugaru min’yō. He applied to his own
school what he had already learned when encountering and reading other
Japanese musical traditions, including Fujimoto’s iemoto school and its en-
semble performance.
As his son and current iemoto of the school, Oyama Mitsugu II, told me
during an interview in 2015, there was a practical reason for his father to ap-
ply this ensemble style to the tsugaru shamisen, which earlier was used ei-
ther as an accompaniment to min’yō or as a solo instrument. At that time,
tsugaru shamisen players used silk for the third (thinnest) and second strings.
Silk strings can easily be snapped during live performances, especially for
tsugaru shamisen music, which employs a so-called tataki (hitting) style with
a bachi (plectrum). e silk strings were later replaced with more durable ny-
lon and polyester, which are now the standard materials for the third and sec-
ond strings, respectively, in tsugaru shamisen music culture. An ensemble
style in the tsugaru shamisen music tradition was thus invented to solve the
problem of interrupted performances because silk strings were used at the
time (Oyama Mitsugu II 2015). In an ensemble setting, even if player’s strings
snapped, the other members could continue the performance. Mitsugu’s con-
cern about the durability of silk strings eventually led to the formation of a
large ensemble style—with hundreds of shamisen players—as the number of
the members of the musical organization increased later on (g. 1).
Figure 1. e Oyama school’s shamisen ensemble performing in its ieth
annual recital, Tokyo, April 12, 2014 (courtesy of the Oyama-kai).
40 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
Mitsugu’s other project was to learn two types of notation systems, which
had already been in use in other musical traditions in Japan, and then apply
them to the tradition of tsugaru shamisen music, which had been transmit-
ted orally and aurally over generations. is project began during the time
when Mitsugu was regularly performing at Furusato. Many performers of
Japanese instruments visited Furusato to listen to the min’yō performance.
e Japanese classical koto player and composer Yuize Shin’ichi (1923–
2015), who was not from min’yō traditions, watched Mitsugu’s performance
and advised him to learn the Western ve-line notation and transcribe his
tsugaru shamisen ensemble repertoire (Matsuki 2011, 85). Mitsugu studied
with Yuize for eight years until he mastered the system (ibid., 85–86). Mean-
while, Mitsugu also started to learn the bunkafu style, that is, three-line tab-
lature for shamisen, which had already been in use in such shamisen genres as
nagauta and jiuta in Tokyo. It reads from le to right and top to bottom, and
numbers in bunkafu refer to positions on the instrument.
In 1977, Mitsugu published the rst volume of his own arrangements of
min’yō from Hōgaku-sha with an audiocassette accompaniment. e rst vol-
ume contains min’yō from both the Aomori prefecture, which encompasses
the Tsugaru district, and from Akita and Hokkaido. e rst min’yō listed
in this volume is his arrangement of “Tsugaru Jongara Kyū-bushi.” Mitsugu
produced two more volumes, and then his son took over the project.
e school has already published 14 volumes of the min’yō repertoire—in-
cluding the niagari medley volume (2001)—that contain 145 pieces. Among
them are an etude in the niagari medley volume; a danmono (a variation piece
in multiple sections) for tsugaru shamisen, “Tsugaru Jongara Bushi Roku-dan”
(six-section instrumental work) in the tenth volume (1993); and a kyokubiki
(instrumental piece) in the eleventh volume (2000). It is notable that Aomori
prefecture min’yō are usually listed rst in every volume, especially for those
called Tsugaru godai min’yō (the ve songs of Tsugaru), including “Tsugaru
Jongara Bushi,” “Tsugaru Ohara Bushi,” “Tsugaru Yosare Bushi,” “Tsugaru
Aiya Bushi,” and “Tsugaru Sansagari.” Although the rst seven volumes com-
prise only Tohoku and Hokkaido min’yō, starting from the eighth volume, the
collection includes min’yō from other prefectures such as Shimane, Ishikawa,
Toyama, Osaka, and Fukuoka.
All pieces in the collection are written in both Western sta notation and
bunkafu, which Mitsugu learned from musicians outside the Tsugaru min’yō/
shamisen music tradition. In the interview, Mitsugu II (2015) told me why the
school decided to write these pieces in Western sta notation:
We wanted the min’yō collection to be used by musicians in other musical tra-
ditions, such as pianists, violinists, and any other instrumentalists, besides
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 41
shamisen players. When they see the music, they can read and understand
what is happening musically. Bunkafu is, on the other hand, too specic to the
shamisen, so musicians who are trained in Western musical traditions cannot
read it at all. We thus decided to transcribe our arrangements into ve-line no-
tation, as it has been recognized as the common notation system of the world.
is statement shows Mitsugu’s intention to make the school’s repertoire
available and accessible to musicians belonging to other musical traditions.
What is fundamental in the study of iemoto is to understand for what pur-
poses each individual agent adapts the iemoto systems and why the systems
are deemed necessary to each case.
Evaluation of Mitsugu’s Adaptation of the Iemoto Systems
ese projects and subsequent changes made to the tsugaru shamisen tradi-
tion (i.e., the establishment of the Oyama-ryū by adapting iemoto systems,
development of a large ensemble style, and creation of the school’s min’yō col-
lection in both bunkafu and Western sta notation) were at rst not accept-
able or, more precisely, unthinkable to other shamisen players in the Tohoku
region. Tsugaru shamisen player Kida Rinshōei (1911–79) was opposed to
Mitsugu’s project to create the min’yō collection. Mitsugu studied with Kida
and, as part of jungyō, toured together throughout the Tohoku and Hokkaido
regions in the 1950s. Kida criticized Mitsugu’s project because the music of
Tsugaru, which used to be that of blind bosama, was learned through au-
ral/oral transmission and the basis of shamisen performance was improvi-
sation (Matsuki 2011, 86; Oyama Mitsugu II 2015). Yet the Oyama-ryū has
spread throughout the nation by increasing the number of its members who
hold teaching licenses and/or professional stage names. ere are 185 li-
censed masters throughout the country today. Mitsugu’s eorts made such
resources, including both instructors and written music, available and acces-
sible to many people living in Japan who are interested in learning the musi-
cal instrument.
Today, tsugaru shamisen music has been taught mostly in iemoto schools,
and each headmaster also creates and publishes her or his own arrangements
and collection of min’yō as well as original pieces in bunkafu. For instance,
tsugaru shamisen player Nitta Hiroshi established his own iemoto school,
Nitta-ryū, in Sapporo, Hokkaido, in 1989 aer working as a touring musi-
cian with his teacher, Shirakawa Gunpachirō II, in the 1970s and 1980s.
Nitta (2015) said to me that during the time of jungyō, it was impossible for
him to establish a ryūha because he was always moving around the coun-
try. In contrast, Mitsugu could establish his own ryūha in the 1960s because
in Tokyo he encountered other musical traditions that had been carried on
42 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
based on the iemoto systems for centuries and he could work and reside in
Furusato. Mitsugu had a xed workplace where his students came to learn
to play the shamisen and a setting in which he could open his own school
and oer regular shamisen lessons. is setting is also part of an individual
agent’s structure, which has certain impacts on her or his everyday practices
and long-term projects.
In 2012, Hiroshi and his son Masahiro published their rst collection of
shamisen music written in bunkafu, Tsugaru Shamisen Nitta-ryū Fumen-shū
(e tsugaru shamisen Nitta-ryū sheet music collection). But unlike Oyama’s
Min’yō-shū, which consists almost entirely of their arrangements of min’yō,
Nitta’s Fumen-shū includes their original pieces arranged for a shamisen en-
semble, such as a two-part composition, “Kitano Hibiki” (Echoes of the
north), by Hiroshi and another two-part composition, “Kizuna” (Family
bonds), by Hiroshi and Masahiro. Although individual shamisen players
have their own techniques to be applied to the performance, which are some-
times kept secret from others, it is also fair to say that to establish their own
artistic styles and make their living in the world of Japanese performing arts,
iemoto headmasters today are impelled to sell and circulate their own reper-
toires. I found during my visit to the Nitta family in Sapporo in July 2015 that,
among the Nittas and others, Oyama Mitsugu has been recognized as a pio-
neer of applying iemoto systems to the tsugaru shamisen tradition and invent-
ing an ensemble style.
In addition to the sheet music and iemoto system, the large ensemble style
has become standard in this musical tradition. On October 25, 2014, for in-
stance, the Japan Local Folk Song Association gathered more than one thou-
sand tsugaru shamisen players from dierent iemoto schools—including
the Oyama—to perform a version of “Tsugaru Jongara Bushi Roku-dan” at
Nippon Budōkan in Tokyo. On this occasion, the Guinness World Records
Japan recognized the world record for the largest tsugaru shamisen ensem-
ble performance, with 1,124 players in total, which was led by the iemoto of
tsugaru shamisen Tōshū-kai Katō Satoshi. Oyama Mitsugu II (2015), who
played a main role in this project, informed me of their intention to have the
large tsugaru shamisen ensemble performance in the opening ceremony of the
Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics. Tsugaru shamisen musicians’ growing global
perspective shaped the ways they created cultural resources and, therefore,
reconstructed existing social and cultural congurations in iemoto society.
e case of Mitsugu illustrates possible moments of change in the musical
organization and the tsugaru shamisen music tradition as a whole. e theory
of individual agency provides a perspective for understanding the formative
processes of the ryūha and the agent’s intentions and projects.
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 43
Oyama Yoshikazu’s Agency and Creativity
Oyama Yoshikazu (real name Nakajima Ken’ichi) began to learn thetsugaru
shamisen with the Oyama-ryū licensed master Oyama Mitsuyoshi in
Tamamura, Gunma, in 1992. Aer studying the school’s repertoire from
the volumes of the Min’yō-shū and passing the performance examination
that the school oers annually, he received his professional stage name,
Oyama Yoshikazu, from the current iemoto, Oyama Mitsugu II, in 1998. In
2003, Yoshikazu founded his own musical organization, Yoshikazu-kai, as a
branch of the Oyama-ryū, having been licensed to teach tsugaru shamisen by
Mitsugu II in the same year. e surname, Oyama (小山), was derived from
that of the iemoto Oyama Mitsugu (小山貢); and the given name, Yoshikazu
(慶一), was created based on their tradition, by taking the kanji character 慶
from that of his direct teacher, Oyama Mitsuyoshi (小山貢津慶). rough
this stage name, we can comprehend to which ryūha he belongs and from
whom he has directly learned the Oyama-ryū tsugaru shamisen. As of July
2015, the Yoshikazu-kai consists of more than 40 members whose ages range
from their teens to 70s. Among them, four members have received both their
stage names and teaching certicates, and two other members received their
stage names from Mitsugu II.
To develop the theory of individual agency, I draw on William Sewell Jr.’s
(2005) notion of creativity. I regard creativity as individual agents’ capacity
to apply their own sets of schemas and resources to various social contexts
and occasions. Furthermore, I conceptualize an individual agent’s creativity
into two categories: (1) the social, in which creativity is used to make and
strengthen person-to-person connections and networks both within or be-
yond any social unit; and (2) the cultural, used to produce cultural resources,
including, for example, musical sounds, performance, and sheet music.
Yoshikazu’s Creativity and Use of the Min’yō-shū
An okeikoba (lesson room) is an important place for those belonging to
the Yoshikazu-kai. Students have individual tsugaru shamisen lessons with
Yoshikazu in the okeikoba, one of which is located in Isesaki, Gunma. ere
they develop and improve their shamisen performance skills through face-
to-face interactions with their master during lessons. Whereas Yoshikazu
mostly utilizes Mitsugu’s Min’yō-shū as teaching materials, he oen provides
his students with his own ensemble arrangements and original compositions,
which are written in bunkafu. To advanced students, he additionally gives les-
sons on how to improvise over both min’yō and popular music pieces.
44 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
is okeikoba also functions as a space in which to strengthen social
connections among the members. e lessons taking place in the Isesaki
okeikoba usually start at 6:00 p.m. and end around 10:00 p.m. and are on
a rst-come, rst-served basis. Many students of Yoshikazu come in ear-
lier time slots for their 20-minute individual lessons but usually stay in the
okeikoba even aer their individual lessons nish. Yoshikazu allows them
to observe their fellow members taking lessons with him in the large space
of the okeikoba so that they know which pieces and techniques other mem-
bers are currently studying. During breaks between lessons, they discuss,
for instance, their upcoming musical performances, concerts, and recitals.
Yoshikazu and other members of the Yoshikazu-kai are oen invited to per-
form in annual recitals organized by Yoshikazu’s teacher, Mitsuyoshi. On
these occasions, Mitsuyoshi, Yoshikazu, and members of the Mitsuyoshi-
kai and Yoshikazu-kai together perform Mitsugu’s ensemble arrangements
from the Min’yō-shū. e master-disciple relationship between Mitsuyoshi
and Yoshikazu has been maintained through their collaborative performance
of Mitsugu’s Min’yō-shū. To some members of the Yoshikazu-kai, the Isesaki
okeikoba also serves as a space in which to prepare for their upcoming musi-
cal performances with the Mitsuyoshi-kai—thus allowing social connections
with Mitsuyoshi and his students as well.
I asked Yoshikazu (2015) what was most important to consider when at-
tempting to keep his musical organization active and connected. He an-
swered with a Japanese word: kizuna (bonds of friendship, in this context).
Individuals’ creativity has been used to develop and keep a well-connected
kizuna among members of this musical community. Yoshikazu, as the
leader ( kaishu) of the Yoshikazu-kai, organizes three social events through-
out the year: shinnen-kai (New Year’s party) in January, shokibarai (forget-
the- summer-heat party) in July or August, and bōnen-kai (year-end party) in
December. e shinnen-kai and shokibarai usually take place in the Isesaki
okeikoba. In addition to some Japanese food and drink, on these occasions
Yoshikazu and his students together perform a number of pieces from a set
list, which mostly consists of Mitsugu’s ensemble arrangements from the
Min’yō-shū. As Yoshikazu told me, these occasions provide his students with
opportunities to play the shamisen in front of people, to know and learn from
others’ playing, and thus to establish solid social connections among the in-
dividual members. Yoshikazu learned this idea from his teacher and applied
this schema to his own case to create and develop a kizuna among those be-
longing to the Yoshikazu-kai. e Min’yō-shū here serves as an essential in-
gredient, or resource, for Yoshikazu’s creativity rather than an obstacle to it.
Part of Yoshikazu’s job as a licensed master of the Oyama-ryū is to have
his students receive their own professional stage names and teaching li-
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 45
censes from the iemoto. During one-on-one lessons, Yoshikazu helps them
pass the performance examinations that the school oers each summer. To
receive a professional stage name from the iemoto, for instance, a student
has to be able to suciently perform two of the school’s repertoire from the
Min’yō-shū in front of the iemoto and a few other principal members of the
school: “Tsugaru Jongara Kyū-bushi,” arranged by Mitsugu, and another
Tohoku min’yō of choice but from Mitsugu’s Min’yō-shū, such as “Ringo
Bushi,” “Tsugaru Gan’nin Bushi,” “Kuroishi Yosare Bushi,” “Torajo Sama,” or
“Tsugaru Jinku.” Aer passing the examination, the student pays the school
ve hundred thousand yen (about US $4,100) in exchange for her or his pro-
fessional stage name. In 2012, two of Yoshikazu’s students received their stage
names from the iemoto: Oyama Kazune (小山一音) and Oyama Kazuma
(小山一眞). eir surname, Oyama (小山), was derived from that of the
school, and their given names were created by taking a kanji character (一)
from that of their direct teacher, Yoshikazu (慶一).
In April 2013, the school’s forty-ninth annual recital took place in Tokyo,
where its headquarters are located. In the middle part of the concert pro-
gram, listed as shikiten (ceremony), Kazune and Kazuma were introduced as
making their ohirome (debut), with their new stage names, to other members
of the school who came from dierent parts of the country and to the gen-
eral public. is ceremony was also organized for those members who had
received teaching certicates and new positions aer passing performance
examinations and other assessments. Right aer the iemoto introduced these
members to the audience, they together performed several musical pieces
from their repertoire.
e performance began with the iemoto’s kakegoe (calling voice) “Ha!,”
which was followed by a short chōshi-awase (tuning-up) section. In this open-
ing section, tsugaru shamisen players make small adjustments to the tun-
ing and the azuma-zawari, a device installed in the instrument for creating
a buzzing eect. e chōshi-awase is also used to set a rhythm and tempo
for a piece to be performed, which was, in this case, Mitsugu’s arrangement
of “Tsugaru Jongara Kyū-bushi.” Although the tradition and practice of the
chōshi-awase existed among bosama in the northern part of Japan in the late
nineteenth century, the school created its own version in a large-ensemble
context—with more than two hundred shamisen players. e rst four mea-
sures of chōshi-awase shown in gure 2, including syncopated and triplet g-
ures on the second and fourth measures, are what make this Oyama version
distinct from others.
Here we comprehend the ways each member of the iemoto organization
contributes to the representation and concretization of typical characteristics
of the iemoto systems, such as master-disciple relationship (e.g., Hsu 1975;
46 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
Kawashima 1957; Ortolani 1969; Smith 1998; Yano 1992) and ctive kinship
(Lebra 1976; Smith 1998). ese are explicit moments of structuration of the
iemoto organization. Moreover, Mitsugu’s Min’yō-shū plays an important role
in this process; each individual agent purposively utilizes the Min’yō-shū,
which turns into an ingredient of the agent’s musical creativity. Individual
agents also utilize this cultural resource to construct and strengthen their so-
cial connections.
Nevertheless, only a few students of Yoshikazu (six among more than
40 people) have opted to become “family” members of the Oyama-ryū. In
other words, becoming “family” members depends on students’ choice of
whether to pursue their stage names and teaching certicates and whether
their performance skills and experiences are adequate to obtain these cer-
ticates. During my eldwork period, I had chances to meet and talk with
many of Yoshikazu’s students, and through conversation with them, I could
learn their diverse musical and occupational backgrounds and objectives.
For example, I talked with Kazuma, who is currently in his early 20s. He told
me that he has been working hard to win a prize in annual tsugaru shamisen
competitions held in many parts of Japan, including the Tsugaru region, and
to become a professional tsugaru shamisen player like Yoshikazu. To be-
come a professional shamisen musician is Kazuma’s long-term project, which
explains why he decided to obtain his stage name in the musical organiza-
tion; therefore, the name-taking system can be interpreted as part of the re-
sources available for him. He also received a teaching certicate from the
iemoto in 2014, aer passing another performance examination. I met an el-
derly man who is not only a student of Yoshikazu but also a min’yō singer and
instructor in this area and decided not to take a stage name. I spoke to an-
other student who called himself a fan of Yoshikazu. He said that he has been
Figure 2. e Oyama-ryū chōshi-awase for “Tsugaru Jongara Kyū-bushi”
performed in the school’s forty-ninth annual recital, Tokyo, April27, 2013.
Transcribed from a eld recording by the author.
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 47
a member of the Yoshikazu-kai for a number of years because he loves listen-
ing to Yoshikazu’s tsugaru shamisen performance and socializing with other
members of the Yoshikazu-kai. He has no intention to pursue a stage name.
e ryūha is thus made up of a set of individuals with dierent cultural back-
grounds and projects.
Yoshikazu’s Musical Creativity and
Resources Available outside the Oyama-ryū
On July 7, 2013, I made an hour’s drive to the hot-spring resort town of
Minakami to observe Yoshikazu and his advanced students’ musical per-
formance. It was the rst time I had seen Yoshikazu-kai’s own performance.
In this performance, he was the leader or what members of the group called
“chief ” (chiifu) of the shamisen ensemble, who usually sits at the center and
does kakegoe. ey collaborated with an itinerant acting troupe headed by ac-
tor Nakamura Takamaru. e troupe’s performance is called taishū engeki
(theater for the masses), which dates from the Meiji period (1868–1912). To-
day, there are more than 130 taishū engeki troupes active in Japan, oen led
by those in their 20s and 30s, like Nakamura (Oshibai JP 2016). ey per-
form in taishū engeki theaters and provincial hot-spring hotels in various
parts of the country. In this “light” theater, male actors oen perform roles
of women, as in kabuki. e series of Nakamura’s performances at the con-
cert hall Mikuni-kan, located next to a public bathhouse, ran from May to
July 2013. Yoshikazu and his students joined the troupe as guest performers
that aernoon.
e program consisted of three sections: (1) a jidai ninjōgeki (historical
melodrama) by Nakamura’s troupe, (2) a tsugaru shamisen performance by
the Yoshikazu-kai, and (3) a dance performance by Nakamura’s troupe in col-
laboration with the shamisen performance by the Yoshikazu-kai. Yoshikazu’s
set list included pieces selected from the Min’yō-shū, yet he added some orig-
inal ornamentation (e.g., sliding technique, plucking, and muting) and im-
provised kaede (secondary ornamental parts) at certain points in these
pieces. Furthermore, Yoshikazu performed his own improvisational piece
( kyokubiki) as well as an original piece titled “Karma” (Oyama X Nitta 2011).
In the very last part of the program, Nakamura’s troupe danced to a record-
ing of Japanese singer Misora Hibari (1937–89) performing a Japanese popu-
lar enka song, “Fūsetsu Nagaretabi” (Traveling in a snowstorm) (Funamura
2015). Yoshikazu and his students’ shamisen accompaniment was added to
it. e nal part of the program began with Yoshikazu’s original improvi-
sation based on a Tsugaru min’yō called “Tsugaru Jongara Shin-bushi,” and
then the recording of “Fūsetsu Nagaretabi” was played in the concert hall.
48 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
In about the middle of the song, they paused the recording to let the tsugaru
shamisen ensemble play, before resuming the recording aerward. Yoshikazu
and his four advanced students together performed the rst short section of
Mitsugu’s arrangement of danmono, “Ichi-dan” (e rst section).
Five days later, when I met Yoshikazu for my shamisen lesson, I asked him
how he learned “Fūsetsu Nagaretabi.” He showed me his handwritten mu-
sic—with his stamp on it—used for that particular gig. He told me that be-
fore the gig, he had already received an audiocassette tape recording of the
song from Nakamura. He transcribed it into bunkafu aer nding the key
(Csharp, in this case) and guring out the right tuning for the shamisen to do
this transcription. He then composed its shamisen parts by referring to its or-
chestral parts. He decided not to double the vocal line. He carries out these
tasks before actually performing onstage. Additionally, the improvisational
passage in the introductory part was requested by Nakamura right before the
show started. Creativity was, however, not applied only to this arrangement.
Even to those pieces selected from Mitsugu’s Min’yō-shū, he made some ar-
rangements and alterations, including adjusting the lengths of each piece to
accommodate requests of the organizer of the event and adding his own im-
provisatory kaede and advanced performance techniques. Aer all, this was a
musical event across the school border, which used to be taboo among mem-
bers of iemoto schools in the tsugaru shamisen tradition in general until the
1990s (Oyama Mitsugu II 2015).
Such a musical collaboration beyond the school border helps Yoshikazu
cultivate his musicality and creativity as a tsugaru shamisen player by taking
advantage of a greater variety of resources. In addition to actors of the taishū
engeki, Yoshikazu has worked with musicians from dierent musical styles
and traditions, including popular enka singers such as Fuji Ayako, Kitajima
Saburō, and Ishikawa Sayuri; pop idol group Arashi; shakuhachi players; and
local taiko groups, among many others. In many of these settings, Yoshikazu
is expected to read music written in Western sta notation, play in backing
bands, and improvise over chord changes in popular music pieces. He showed
me his own chart that tells how to translate between a traditional Japanese
measuring system based on shaku (尺) and sun (寸), which has been used for
the tuning of the shamisen, and 12 notes in the musical alphabet used in the
Western music tradition. For instance, 2 shaku is equivalent to C in West-
ern music; 2 shaku 1 sun, to B; and 1 shaku 9 sun, to C sharp (g. 3). is
chart helps a shamisen musician who plays, for example, popular enka music
in a backing band to change its tuning for each piece in dierent keys. ese
skills are required for tsugaru shamisen players to keep getting gigs and, thus,
make their living as musicians, no matter to which iemoto schools of tsugaru
shamisen music they belong. Tsugaru shamisen musicians seem to have been
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 49
impelled to keep learning, adopting, and applying Western music theory to
their own musical tradition, as already illustrated in the case of the Min’yō-
shū, which was written in both bunkafu and Western sta notation.
e conventional top-down approach to the study of iemoto makes it di-
cult for us to comprehend the reality that individual members are those who
continuously reconstruct social structures through interactions with others
from dierent cultural backgrounds. As an alternative approach to the prob-
lem, I propose to trace instead human-to-human and human-to-nonhuman
social connections, or, to borrow Bruno Latour’s phrase, to trace a “trail of as-
sociations between heterogeneous elements” (2005, 5). ese “heterogeneous
elements” then turn into resources for individual agents, which also become
ingredients of human thoughts and one’s schemas to be applied to new con-
texts for enactment. To Yoshikazu, Mitsuyoshi, Mitsugu’s Min’yō-shū, other
shamisen players belonging to the ryūha, Western music theory, musicians
outside the musical organization whom he has worked with in professional
gigs, and their musical works can be his resources and ingredients of his so-
cial and musical creativity. e theory of individual agency helps us take into
account a variety of resources both inside and outside an iemoto school and
the ways individual agents creatively and purposively utilize these resources
in the ongoing processes of maintaining, constructing, and performing their
identity as members of the school.
e Purpose of Being a Member of the Oyama-ryū
In an interview with Yoshikazu, which took place in the Isesaki okeikoba on
June 4, 2015, I asked him about the reason for using his stage name in his pro-
fessional life as a t sugaru shamisen player. He answered that at rst it represents
his identity as a member of the Oyama-ryū. e use of the stage name stim-
ulates him to better his shamisen performance onstage. Since the Oyama-ryū
has already been well established in the eld of tsugaru shamisen music, he, as
a licensed master of the school, feels that he must not perform inadequately in
front of audiences. He intends to pursue the career as a professional tsugaru
Figure 3. Each box represents the Japanese measuring system based on shaku
and sun and equivalent notes in the musical alphabet used in the Western
music tradition. is chart is also based on the lengths of the shakuhachi.
Its standard length is 1 shaku 8 sun (shakuhachi), which is pitched in D.
50 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
shamisen musician both for his own sake and for the Oyama-ryū to which he
currently belongs. Shozoku, or “current belonging,” still seems to be a rele-
vant concept.
Nevertheless, we cannot totally ignore the social impact of individual
agency in the iemoto organization. Individuality, creativity, and agency are
all important concepts to be incorporated in future discourses on iemoto.
I, therefore, question the validity and applicability of the old conceptions
of iemoto society in which individual members only passively play their as-
signed roles because subordination of the members to the school is essential.
is structural functionalist point of view tends to relegate human action,
cultural resources, and their perpetual reproduction to the “mechanical out-
come” (Giddens 1993, 128) as ordered by social rules and norms. Sewell is
similarly concerned about the tendency of social sciences that are “trapped
in an unexamined metaphor of structure” to reduce social actors to “cleverly
programmed automatons” (2005, 125). Such a viewpoint may also restrict us
from examining closely how individual agents operate within certain social
structures—thus creating limits to what we can know.
In addition to his activities of performing the shamisen in professional
gigs and teaching in the okeikoba, Yoshikazu frequently appears in annual
tsugaru shamisen competitions in dierent parts of Japan. In May 2013, he
was awarded the second prize for the shamisen division of the Second Annual
Tsugaru Min’yō National Contest in the Birthplace (Dai-nikai Honba Tsugaru
Min’yō Zenkoku Taikai) held in Kurosaki in the Tsugaru region of the Aomori
prefecture. In June 2015, Yoshikazu and his (biological) younger brother,
Oyama Yoshimune, who is a licensed master of the school, produced their
rst (self-released) music album, Ki (Introduction), containing their original
shamisen arrangements of three min’yō (“Tsugaru Aiya Bushi,” Toyama pre-
fecture min’yō “Kokiriko Bushi,” and “Tsugaru Jongara Shin-bushi”) (g. 4).
In their take on “Tsugaru Jongara Shin-bushi,” which is almost entirely im-
provisatory, they start with the Oyama-ryū chōshi-awase.
In their career paths, tsugaru shamisen players are, in general, expected to
win prizes in tsugaru shamisen national contests and to create their own mu-
sic albums. In these processes, teaching can be an important source of in-
come. e Oyama-ryū provides shamisen players with Mitsugu’s Min’yō-shū
as teaching materials. Yoshikazu is capable of actively reading and learning
from these cultural resources in his own way and of creatively using them for
the purpose of establishing his own performance style and, more important,
pursuing his lifelong project to continue making tsugaru shamisen music in
the world of Japanese performing arts. e iemoto organization that is made
up of an array of resources functions as an incentive for—rather than an im-
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 51
pediment to—Yoshikazu’s creativity and productivity in the frame of the the-
ory of individual agency.
Conclusion
is article aims to make an intervention in the scholarship on iemoto by
problematizing Nishiyama’s way of viewing iemoto organizations as feu-
dalistic, static, clandestine, and opposed to individuality. is interpreta-
tion seems to have overlooked the vitality of individual agency, which in fact
brings about transformation and structuration of iemoto society. Further-
more, Nishiyama’s approach, which focuses too much on the staticity of struc-
ture—rather than the dynamism of practice—has not yet been questioned.
I believe this article will help create spaces for reexamining the previous
Figure 4. Cover of Oyama Yoshikazu (right) and Oyama Yoshimune’s (le)
rst music album, Ki (Introduction) (courtesy of Oyama Yoshikazu).
52 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
scholarship on iemoto and re-approach the problem from alternative perspec-
tives and positions.
As a possible approach to the problem, I have proposed to develop and ap-
ply the theory of individual agency to the analysis of the sociocultural prac-
tices of individuals associated with iemoto schools. is perspective focuses
particularly on agents’ projects as motivations to change existing cultural
forms, practices, and communities and on their creativity utilized to pursue
these projects. According to the theory of individual agency, iemoto systems
are made up of an array of both human and nonhuman resources. An iemoto
school consists of individuals with dierent cultural backgrounds and sche-
mas as their own sets of rules. Schemas are purely virtual and can be con-
cretized only by enactment. e ways these individual members utilize such
resources and develop their schemas depend on their projects and creativ-
ity; in various contexts, for instance, individuals belonging to the Oyama-ryū
perform Mitsugu’s arrangements of min’yō from the Min’yō-shū, each for dif-
ferent purposes. Creative agents further access, encounter, and accumulate
new resources and, in so doing, continue remodeling structures either inten-
tionally or contingently. erefore, changes can be made to an iemoto orga-
nization in a gradual manner through each agent’s continuous application of
resources and schemas—as both physical and cognitive sides of structure—to
new settings.
I have asked why iemoto systems are deemed necessary to members of
iemoto schools. In my view, they are necessary to Yoshikazu and other
tsugaru shamisen musicians associated with the Oyama-ryū. ese musicians
have been members of this musical organization because they want to—that
is, they are pursuing their own projects in iemoto society. e systems pro-
vide them with a set of resources, and these musicians read, learn from, and
utilize these resources in their own ways.
I acknowledge that my ndings might be dierent from those of other
case studies of iemoto organizations in a variety of historical, social, and cul-
tural backgrounds. Nevertheless, my point is not to oer a new denition of
iemoto that will be universal to diverse cases. Rather, I want to urge us to
think deeply about the question of how we come to know iemoto. I nally con-
cluded that an iemoto organization consists of a complex set of individuals
with various projects and, thus, distinct reasons for being part of the organi-
zation. But before reaching this conclusion, I spent several years learning the
shamisen with Yoshikazu, participating in the Yoshikazu-kai’s sociocultural
events, and listening to, as well as believing, what individuals associated with
the Oyama-ryū said to me—realizing that their dierent pasts and dierent
futures were converging at the same moment in the present. is epistemo-
Yamada: eorizing Individual Agency in the Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-ryū 53
logical question, I believe, will help complicate and reconstruct our previous
understanding of iemoto and open up new spaces and possibilities for fur-
ther scholarly discussions and debates on this highly arguable and controver-
sial topic.
University of Pennsylvania
Notes
When Japanese names appear in the text, the surname comes before the given
name, per standard usage in Japan, except for those of authors of scholarly articles or
books originally written in English. All translations from Japanese are my own un-
less noted.
Since certied members of a ryūha, with their own stage names, have the same
“family” name as their iemoto, I refer to these individual members by their given
names.
I was also inspired by Bruno Latour’s idea of “old” and “new” forms of agency. In
the former form, “it is moving,” whereas in the latter, “it is moved” (2014, 3).
Ethnomusicologist Jay Keister denes hōgaku as “styles of music that originated
in the Edo era and earlier that have ‘classical’ connotations of artistry, specialization,
and patronage in urban areas” (2008, 254).
“Tsugaru Jongara Bushi ” has been recognized as one of the “ree Tsugaru Songs”
and has four dierent versions: kyū-bushi, naka-bushi, shin-bushi, and shin kyū-bushi
(old, middle, new, and new old songs, respectively). e old version was developed in
Tsugaru in the early years of the twentieth century in which blind bosama appeared at
local uta-kai and established their reputations (see Groemer 1999, 44–46).
Here nishimono (literally translated as “western things”) refer to min’yō of the
western side of Japan, which are distinct from Tohoku min’yō, the repertoire of
tsugaru shamisen today.
See Yuize Shin’ichi (1983, 1988, 1992) for his autobiography.
Niagari is a type of shamisen tuning (perfect h plus a perfect fourth; C-G-C′).
Two other common shamisen tunings include honchōshi (perfect fourth plus a perfect
h; C-F-C′) and sansagari (perfect fourth plus a perfect fourth; C-F-B at).
See Tsugaru Shamisen Oyama-kai (2015).
Shirakawa Gunpachirō II is a biological son of Shirakawa Gunpachirō.
Gunpachirō (I) toured with Oyama Mitsugu’s teacher Kida Rinshōei for a time.
In shamisen duets, in general, the main part is called honte; and the second, or-
namental part, kaede.
e Japanese word kai means an association or organization. When it immedi-
ately follows someone’s name as a sux, it means an organization established and/
or led by that person. In other contexts, it also means a social gathering or party.
e word ryū (or ryūha) means a school as a group of people sharing specic styles,
54 Asian Music: Winter/Spring 2017
methods, and ideas. In the case of Oyama, an iemoto refers only to the headmaster of
the ryūha. us, while Yoshikazu is the founder and leader of the Yoshikazu-kai, he is
not an iemoto in this particular social context.
Music historian Gerald Groemer explains chōshi-awase and its older use: “In the
early days of tsugaru-jamisen, bosama played the chōshi-awase while standing before
houses waiting for somebody to come to the door. Only if a member of a household
appeared did a bosama begin to play a melody or sing a song. Today the chōshi-
awase has lost this signaling function, but continues to set a rhythm or tempo, pre-
pare a mode or tuning, and initiate a resonance or open-string drone that continues
throughout the performance. Performers and audiences consider the chōshi-awase,
which begins nearly any performance, to be an integral part of the music” (1999, 88;
see also Peluse 2005, 64).
By “professional tsugaru shamisen player” in this context I mean someone who
can make her or his living by only performing, composing, arranging, and/or teach-
ing tsugaru shamisen music.
See Christine Yano (2002) for the study of enka.
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About the Contributors 151
Kendra Stepputat is Senior Lecturer at the University of Music and Perform-
ing Arts Graz (KUG) in Austria, where she has commenced the Habilitation
(postdoctoral degree) about aspects of the tango argentino in its European
context. Her ongoing research interests cover the performing arts in Bali (In-
donesia), in particular the kecak and gamelan beleganjur, and more broadly,
the interrelations of sound and movement, aspects in cultural tourism and
travel, and cosmopolitan structures and postmodern phenomena in the per-
forming arts.
Mary Talusan currently serves as Interim Coordinator for Asian Pacic
Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. She holds a PhD in
ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her recent
publications include “Muslim Filipino Traditions in Filipino American Popu-
lar Culture” inMuslims and American Popular Culture (2014) and “Marching
to ‘Progress’: Music, Race, and Imperialismat the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair”
in Mixed Blessing: e Impact of the American Colonial Experience on Politics
and Society in the Philippines (2013). Her book in progress is titled Symphony
Halls, World’s Fairs, and America’s Racial Others: Concert Tours of the Philip-
pine Constabulary Band and African American Ocer Walter H. Loving in the
Early 20th Century. She performs with the Pakaraguian Kulintang Ensemble.
Keisuke Yamada is a PhD student in ethnomusicology at the University of
Pennsylvania. He has been conducting ethnographic research on the contem-
porary music culture of tsugaru shamisen. His other research focuses on cul-
tural practices of Japanese popular music fandom. Also, he is currently at work
on a book for Bloomsbury Publishing’s new 33-1/3 Japan Series. is book fo-
cuses on the Japanese 11-piece creator group Supercell and its eponymous rst
album Supercell (2009), which features virtual pop idol Hatsune Miku.
Philip Yampolsky, Founding Director of the Robert E. Brown Center for
World Music at the University of Illinois, recorded and edited the 20-volume
Music of Indonesia CD series (Smithsonian Folkways, 1991–99). His current
research focus (since 2011) is sung poetry in rural communities on the island
of Timor, both Indonesian Timor and Timor-Leste. Another long- standing
line of his research is music and mass media in Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Singapore.
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