If You Want to Become a Musician, Go to Keio

Keio produces an unusually high number of musicians for a general private university.

At the recent concert, you were saying that if someone wants to do music, they should come to Keio, weren't you, Fujioka-san? (laughs)

All three of us are from Keio High School. You are all my seniors from Juku-ko.

I transferred from a high school in Okazaki during my second year of high school.

Please tell us that story about when you first encountered Western music.

Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." I heard it on the radio during the war.

How old were you then?

Sixth grade or first year of junior high. We didn't know anything about Western music. We hadn't received that kind of education at all, and my father had no interest in any music other than Masao Koga.

In Nagoya and Okazaki, we were told to sleep with the radio on because we never knew when the air-raid siren would go off. Back then, it was AM longwave, so the sound quality was quite poor, but as I turned the dial, I'd hear all sorts of unusual music. Among them was "The Rite of Spring" being played from an American warship.

Was it longwave?

Yes. With longwave, they couldn't tell where the broadcasting station was, so it wouldn't get bombed. I heard it amidst a lot of interference. It was a mobile broadcasting station for the entertainment of the soldiers.

Also, Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" came on. I was amazed; I couldn't believe such music existed in the world. You didn't find anything like that in military songs.

You went to Keio from high school, and there you ordered "The Rite of Spring" on LP, didn't you? A very expensive one.

That's right. 3,800 yen (laughs).

I heard you ordered two copies because you were worried they might break during import.

Yes. I was told they wouldn't compensate me if they were damaged.

So you ordered two. That's so typical of Keio (laughs). By then, you were already thinking of becoming a musician, right?

Yes. There happened to be a piano at a relative's house, so I was practicing things like Czerny. I practiced Hanon while wondering if it even counted as music (laughs).

So before that, you didn't have any musical background?

Nothing at all, really. After coming to Tokyo, I started boarding at my uncle's house near Keio Hospital in Shinanomachi. Back then, the whole area was a burnt-out wasteland. If you went a bit closer to Shinjuku, there was a shack of a record store called Kotani Records. Since soldiers from the occupation forces often went in and out, they handled imported records. That's where I bought "The Rite of Spring."

Was "The Rite of Spring" popular when you were in high school, Mr. Yoshimatsu?

Yes, it was.

You also intended to become a composer since your days as a Juku high school student, didn't you?

I awakened to classical music in my third year of junior high, and I entered Keio Senior High School in order to become a composer (laughs).

I was the same. When I said I wanted to be a conductor in elementary school, I was told to take the entrance exams, so I applied to Chutobu Junior High School. The idea was that once I was in, there would be no more entrance exams, and I could study music.

When I looked at the high school brochures before enrolling, Keio Senior High School was the only one with an orchestra club. So, I thought I'd enter Keio and conduct the premiere of my own symphony (laughs).

Then, when I said I was going to Keio, my great-grandfather was a doctor, so he just assumed on his own that I was going to the Keio School of Medicine.

It's in your blood, after all. Mr. Tomita, your father was also a doctor, wasn't he?

That's true, but my father had nothing to do with music. Doctors have their circles, right? When they get together for drinks or something, the conversation always turns to their children. It was embarrassing for him.

He couldn't say he didn't know what I was doing, but he couldn't say I was doing music either. The real trouble was when I bought that 3,800 yen LP I mentioned earlier. Masao Koga's records were much cheaper.

I see (laughs).

He said that such an expensive record must have wonderful music on it, so he insisted I let him hear it. So, when my father came to Tokyo from Okazaki, I let him listen to it—which was a mistake (laughs).

There was no way he could understand it. He just sat there brooding. He said that the very high register of the bassoon at the beginning sounded like a duck having its neck wrung.

That's an accurate description (laughs).

Just when he was hoping it would end soon, next came the chromatic...

It gets all jumbled up, doesn't it?

Nothing like Masao Koga ever came up (laughs). Just as I was thinking this was bad, next came the thump-thump-thump-thump. At the time, uchiwa-daiko (fan drums) were popular.

He thought he'd been made to buy an expensive Stravinsky record, but then he seemed to think I'd joined some strange cult. Apparently, when he went back to Okazaki, he told my mother, "It seems he's fallen into some outrageous religion" (laughs).

Then all hell broke loose. They told me to come home immediately. From there, it was a lecture. He asked if that kind of music could even be called art, and more importantly, if it would ever make any money. Well, any parent would be worried.

Mr. Tomita, did you start studying music after entering Keio?

Secretly, without my father knowing. There was a place called Geijutsu-en inside the YMCA in Kanda Ogawamachi.

I heard that Ryutaro Hirota, a famous composer at the time, was teaching Jadassohn's harmony from Germany there. I didn't know anything about Jadassohn, but I wanted to learn something fundamental, whatever it might be, so I enrolled.

And is that how you transcribed "The Rite of Spring" by ear?

It wasn't quite that far. But just like how you don't forget a person's face once you've seen it, that intense melody of "The Rite of Spring" and Glenn Miller's chords were burned into my brain.

By the time you entered university, you were already doing radio work for NHK, weren't you?

In my second year of university, the Asahi Shimbun was soliciting required pieces for the All-Japan Chorus Federation. I applied and luckily got through.

Since my name appeared in the national edition of the Asahi Shimbun, my father—who had been embarrassed by his son until then—started telling everyone about it and even gave me money, so I became a bit wealthy (laughs).

You became wealthy just from that? I also wrote for an orchestra and submitted it to a music competition in my first year of university, but I kept failing for over ten years and didn't make a single yen (laughs).

Yoshimatsu-san, what were you doing during your university life?

I was composing. That's it. As I told Fujioka-kun when we first met, I have absolutely no memory of what I was doing in my teens (laughs). Back then, there were more things I didn't want to remember. Then Fujioka-kun said, "Maybe you killed someone" (laughs).

My father is of the generation that heard music while tinkering with radios at Hamamatsu Higher Technical School, just like Tomita-san. He started the flute right after the war and played in the YMCA orchestra.

So that was what I heard from the other room while I was being taught harmony (laughs)?

At that time, he had several orchestral scores like the "Unfinished" symphony. When I was in my third year of junior high and listening to Beethoven, he brought them out and said, "I have the scores." That was what originally inspired me to become a composer.

In my case, I still couldn't get my hands on sheet music.

Around when did you first see the score for "The Rite of Spring"?

That was much later. Academia, which is now in Hongo, used to deal in imported sheet music in Ogikubo.

It was a small shop. I wondered why such a specialized shop was in a place like that, but Tomojiro Ikenouchi was the top instructor at the time, and many of his students passed by there. The shop survived because those people bought things. It was expensive. Like 6,000 yen a book.

On my way home from Keio High School, I used to stand and read all the scores at Yamaha in Shibuya. Because they were expensive.

In short, everyone at Keio was doing whatever they liked without studying. There was that free spirit of independence and self-respect.

It was free, indeed. No one told us to study.

Tomita-san, did you get off to a smooth start as a composer after that competition?

I was lucky that Columbia Records and NHK backed me up. Since I was young, they were a bit interested in me and asked if I wanted to work for them.

So, at first, I composed for a 15-minute segment called "Fujin no Jikan" (Women's Hour) that featured stories and music. They liked it quite a bit, and I started working on a program called "Rittai Ongakudo" (Stereo Concert Hall), which NHK broadcast in stereo.

That's the one where you used Radio 1 and Radio 2 for stereo broadcasting, right?

Oh, I'll never forget it. They had Mitsubishi Diatone speakers designed by Tamon Saeki. The sound coming out of them was incredible. And with an orchestra of nearly 100 people, no matter what kind of piece you write, it ends up sounding great.

But it's amazing. To think you were doing that kind of work as a college sophomore.

Well, I can only think of it as being lucky.

And around that age, what was Mr. Yoshimatsu doing...?

I think I was writing for orchestra at about the same pace starting from my freshman year of college, but in my case, there was absolutely no one to evaluate me, no one to provide funding, and no one to tell me, "You have talent." After all, the first person who ever said, "I'll record an orchestral piece for you," was Fujioka-kun (laughs). It was a textbook case of being "unfortunate."

Recently, I released a CD of pieces I wrote when I was 16 or 17 at Keio High School. Looking back, they aren't much different from the pieces I write now.

Just like Mozart, then (laughs).

So, by the age of 17 or 18, your style or musicality is already established to some extent.

It's a time when you haven't been "polluted" by listening to too many different things yet, so conversely, your own individuality probably comes through.

That might be true.

Among your works, I especially love "Captain Ultra" and "Mighty Jack." I recently bought the DVD box sets of the dramas just to listen to the music. Of course, I also love "Jungle Emperor" and "Princess Knight."

There's probably an influence from American musicals and things like that. However, I never had the experience of a great teacher instructing me that "this is what music is," and I think that was for the best. Also, the environment here at Keio is probably a good factor.

Even when you studied under Kishio Hirao, was there no "this is what music is" type of teaching?

No, none. He taught in a way that allowed me to grasp the acoustic aspects of the orchestra, which is what I wanted to know. He never said things like "it must be this way."

Mr. Yoshimatsu, you probably would have rebelled against that kind of teaching as well.

I had a bit of a twisted side, like "as if I'd let anyone teach me." Unlike Mr. Tomita, my teens and twenties were not blessed; I was driven by a long-standing resentment.

I'm so grateful for meeting both of you. I met Mr. Yoshimatsu first, but I had no idea you were both Keio alumni. When I heard Mr. Yoshimatsu's "Threnody to Toki" in the UK, it had such a huge impact on me that I decided I absolutely had to perform his music.

That really is a masterpiece.

My meeting with Mr. Tomita came a bit later, but it was for the fanfare at Keio's 150th anniversary ceremony. That was the first time I worked with him. Brass bands from Keio’s various schools were stationed at the four corners of the stadium to play the fanfare. And in the middle of it all, he said, "Fujioka-kun, conduct this piece." There was no way it could sync up while conducting from the center of a stadium.

Everything ends up being delayed by a second (laughs).

When I told him, "Sensei, there's no way this will sync," Mr. Tomita said, "I’m planning to do this between the Moon and the Earth. This is easy." He said the most outrageous things (laughs).

But miraculously, that one worked out well.

So you didn't write it with the assumption that it would be out of sync, right?

Everyone is right on the beat.

It’s unbearable for those of us forced to do it.

Many composers say quite outrageous things.

The top British label Chandos agreed to record whatever I wanted, and I said I’d do Takashi Yoshimatsu. That was the start of the first project where a foreign label recorded a Japanese composer's work with a top-tier orchestra like the BBC Philharmonic. Mr. Yoshimatsu wrote his "Symphony No. 3," and looking back, the recording was actually the premiere.

Right. No one had ever heard it before.

Usually, you have a premiere somewhere first, make some adjustments, and then record, but we went straight to recording for the premiere. All four movements went incredibly well. We said, "It's Christmas, let's go to the party, we're done, that was great," but when we went back to the recording booth, Mr. Yoshimatsu was there fuming alone.

He said, "Fujioka, go back and do it again." When I asked what was wrong, he said, "It’s too much in sync." He said, "Go break it. I don't want to hear such a clean performance" (laughs).

I went back to the podium and said we were going to record it one more time, and everyone asked, "What was wrong with it?" I had no choice but to say, "We are too much together" (laughs). Because the ensemble was too good... composers really do say the most outrageous things.

I went to the trouble of writing difficult parts so they wouldn't sound perfect, so it feels unsettling when they sync up perfectly. When I did the music for a Taiga drama, I told the NHK Symphony members it was "too much in sync" and we ended up in an argument (laughs).

But I told them I didn't want the feeling of a Rolls-Royce driving; I wanted the feeling of riding a motorcycle, cutting through the wind, feeling like it might disintegrate in mid-air at any moment.

Speaking of motorcycles, Mr. Tomita rode a Harley until he was over 70. I heard that during the Osaka Expo, he used to ride his Harley back and forth between Tokyo and Osaka. About how many hours did that take one way?

Double the time of the Shinkansen. Back then, the Shinkansen took three hours from Tokyo to Osaka, so you just had to allow for six hours.

Going from Tokyo to Osaka means crossing the Earth from east to west. Since the Earth is a magnet, magnetic field lines run from the North Pole to the South Pole, and you're riding across them from east to west.

A motorcycle is the only vehicle where you're riding "naked." That's why it's the only way the magnetic field lines pass through your body.

You can feel the magnetism?

I feel it.

What? I've never heard of such a thing.

That's exactly like a migratory bird (laughs).

It's just like when you put Pip Elekiban all over your body. You start to get high. I love that sensation. Because of that, my stiff shoulders completely went away.

So by going to Osaka on a Harley, your stiff shoulders disappear (laughs).

But you have to ride fast. At least 100 kilometers per hour on the Tomei Expressway.

This spring, I had the opportunity to perform Mr. Tomita's "The Tale of Genji Symphonic Fantasy." It is a great masterpiece that beautifully fuses traditional Japanese instruments and the Kyoto dialect; the Kyoto dialect fits in perfectly, almost like an opera.

Speaking of Kyoto, Mr. Yoshimatsu wrote a piece called "Three Ink Paintings" for the Kyoto Prefecture Goods Association, and that is also wonderful. We performed it with a large orchestra this August.

Having contemporary composers who write such wonderful music close by—and knowing they are my seniors from school—really makes it worthwhile.

The first time my music was performed in Osaka, the conductor was applauding, so I tried to go up on stage, but a security guard suddenly stopped me (laughs). "Why are you going on stage?" "Well, I'm the composer."

Back then, the very fact that a composer was alive and coming to the hall was rare.

That did happen. Among the Keio musicians Mr. Yoshimatsu and I often interact with, there is Izumi Tateno, who is a bit younger than Mr. Tomita and famous as the "left-handed pianist."

I have been working with Mr. Tateno quite often lately.

Also, about 10 years ago when I went to conduct Keio's Wagner Society, a girl playing trombone came to me for advice, saying she desperately wanted to become a professional. She was certainly talented, but since she was a girl, I told her, "It's difficult, so you should probably give up."

Then about three years ago, I was casually watching TV and saw her playing in the Berlin Philharmonic—I was floored. Her name is Mayumi Shimizu; she graduated from a German music university and is now the principal player for the SWR Symphony Orchestra. She is also often called as an extra for the Berlin Phil.

Also, Keisuke Ikuma, an oboist two years below me, plays the cor anglais (English horn) in the New York Philharmonic. He also conducts and had a huge success conducting the Broadway musical "The King and I."

The one with Ken Watanabe in it.

And after all, Mariko Senju was my classmate.

I have Masataka Matsutoya about two years above me. About ten years above is Yuji Ohno of "Lupin the Third" fame; I heard his playing was already professional-level back in his student days.

Ohno was good at the electric piano from early on.

What surprised me was Michiko Ogawa, a Keio University alumni who became an executive at Panasonic and is active in reviving the Technics brand—she is actually a jazz pianist. I went to a club in Ginza secretly to hear her, and her piano playing is truly amazing.

It was so incredible that when I had her perform "Rhapsody in Blue" with the Kansai Philharmonic, the players were just stunned.

It's called stride piano; it's a slightly unique style of jazz.

When Mr. Tomita first got a synthesizer, nobody thought it was a musical instrument back then; they thought it was military equipment, so it wouldn't pass through customs (laughs).

I didn't think it was an instrument at first either. I was like, "What?!"

You passed through customs by showing a photo of Keith Emerson playing, didn't you?

Conversely, when Toru Takemitsu performed "November Steps" in New York, the shakuhachi player was reportedly told that it wasn't a musical instrument. They were told to actually make it sound, and that's how they got through customs.

Even if I were told to make it sound, I wouldn't have known how (laughs). I was about to start researching that, after all.

FM magazines back when synthesizers first came out were great because they had articles and ads for all genres of music, weren't they?

I also started listening to things like prog rock through FM radio. Right after listening to Wagner, I got obsessed with Pink Floyd and the like (laughs).

We used to do what was called "air-checking," recording on tape every day.

In my time, we couldn't do air-checking. During the war.

But that makes you listen more intently, doesn't it?

Exactly. And if it's a good song, if you wait for it, they'll definitely play it again.

When I first heard "The Rite of Spring" on an American military broadcast, it sounded like a flickering flame erupting from the depths of the earth. But when I looked at the score later, it's relatively simple, isn't it? Once you take away all the extra stuff, you think, "Oh, is that all?" Bach's structure is much more difficult.

Bach's three-dimensional three-part and four-part voices are amazing, aren't they?

I believe Akira Ifukube said that when he first heard classical music, he understood "The Rite of Spring" right away, but he actually didn't quite get Beethoven at first.

During the war, I also found the sounds of the US military's B-29 bombers and Grumman fighters interesting.

Did you really have the peace of mind to think they were interesting? (laughs)

"The Rite of Spring" was an extension of that.

So it comes from something like the mechanism of acoustics. But in terms of the sense of harmony, your style isn't really Stravinsky-esque, is it, Mr. Tomita? Does it come more from Glenn Miller?

That might be it, but I don't really know myself why it turned out this way (laughs). However, it's certain that I didn't have a proper instructor and learn music under them.

I'm also basically self-taught. I studied using books like Akira Ifukube's or Berlioz's "Treatise on Instrumentation" and records of modern works that I had the Keio High School library buy. But I was always the only one who borrowed them (laughs).

When I joined the Wagner Society in high school, I was told to play the bassoon because there was no one in that part. Of course, I had to buy the instrument myself, but it was so expensive I couldn't afford it, so I kept borrowing a used one that belonged to the club.

That's rare (laughs)

However, I could only get an octave and a half out of it. Even though orchestration books said the bassoon has a wide range of three or four octaves. When I played it, it sounded like a duck getting its neck wrung (laughs). The opening of "The Rite of Spring" is an unimaginable range, isn't it?

It's amazing he started there. I'd be too scared to do that.

I suppose it's the concept of high tones—forcing out notes that shouldn't come out. So if Stravinsky were alive and heard today's performances, I think he'd be angry, saying, "It shouldn't be that pretty." But Mr. Tomita, you don't really compose in such a Stravinsky-esque way, do you?

でも冨田さん、そんなにストラヴィンスキー的なつくり方はしないですよね。

Actually, I ripped off quite a bit for "Kimba the White Lion." You know, that kind of mechanical sound.

And for you, Mr. Tomita, it's Ottorino Respighi, right? "Pines of Rome." When I did "The Tale of Genji" recently, I really felt the influence of "Pines of Rome" again.

この前「源氏物語」をやって思いましたが、「ローマの松」はやっぱりすごく感じましたね。

Respighi is incredible, isn't he?

That whole world of his. What disappointed me was right after the war, Hidemaro Konoye performed Respighi with a Beethoven-like interpretation. It was terrible. Critics back then, like Koichi Nomura and Ginji Yamane, just trashed Respighi himself.

Even with a wonderful piece, if the performance is bad, people say the composition is bad. In that sense, we carry a heavy responsibility (laughs).

Your Sibelius on "Untitled Concert" was excellent, Mr. Fujioka. I thought your conducting was truly amazing.

Oh, thank you very much. Next time, I'm performing Sibelius's 6th, which Mr. Yoshimatsu said shocked him as a boy. Like "The Rite of Spring," being shocked by Sibelius's 6th shows you were very precocious.

「春の祭典」もそうですが、シベリウスの６番で衝撃を受けたというのは、すごくませていたんですね。

I got hooked after buying the LP at the co-op during my first year at Keio High School.

I only came to understand that piece after I turned 50. And you, in your first year of high school...

No, it just felt like, "This is exactly what it would sound like if you orchestrated the world of Kenji Miyazawa."

People who like Kenji Miyazawa often say that. Mr. Tateno likes it a lot, too.

Yes. I think there must be some common ground.

And you, Mr. Tomita, recently composed the "Ihatov Symphony."

I've been interested since I was a child, but I didn't really understand it well.

I didn't understand it at all either (laughs). There's a strange sense of loneliness, isn't there?

There is loneliness, and also that sensibility of giving characters Westernized names like Campanella or Giovanni despite being born in rural Iwate.

I feel like that's similar to the sensibility of talking about symphonies or Beethoven while being born in Japan.

Since I'm working with Takashi Yoshimatsu, I felt I had to understand Kenji Miyazawa, so I recently went to see a planetarium screening of "Night on the Galactic Railroad."

That's a train that carries the dead. People who died on the Titanic are on board. I thought the lights outside the window, like a field of flowers, represented that world you often hear about in near-death experiences.

Sibelius wrote his Sixth Symphony when his younger brother, Christian, died.

Kenji Miyazawa also wrote "Night on the Galactic Railroad" triggered by the death of his younger sister, Toshi. It was the exact same year: 1922.

That's so incredible it's almost eerie.

I got chills when I heard that much later. So, I think there's not just a sense of loneliness, but a deep sense of loss in both of them.

There's no bitterness or resentment, but there is a cry.

I think the most common type of musician from Keio is someone like me, who enters a music college after graduating from university. However, that's not the case for soloists.

As Mr. Tomita said, I think it's probably better to find what you believe in first and then pursue music, rather than doing it because you're told "this is how music should be."

For me, Glenn Miller and Stravinsky were just some of the many sounds I heard since childhood. That's how I got into it. So, I'm glad I didn't receive an education where I was taught piano as a child and told, "This is C, this is D."

I truly agree. At Keio, I encountered Sibelius and progressive rock, and I went on to study Sibelius's scores and prog rock. Of course, I study under teachers or read books because I want to know about music, but I don't want to hear long-winded lectures on what music is supposed to be.

The great thing about Keio is that you can meet all kinds of people. At music colleges, people inevitably come from similar backgrounds.

Also, at music colleges, professors tend to form their own cliques, don't they? I dislike that. At Keio, there's none of that. In short, in our world, it all comes down to whether the audience responds to what we've created or not.

In Mr. Yoshimatsu's music for "Taira no Kiyomori," there was a song that went "Asobi o sento ya umarekemu" (Were we born to play?). I really like that.

Thank you. But talking like this, even though I was doing the same things as Mr. Tomita during my time at Keio, I never met anyone who acted as a supporter. I wonder if it's a difference in personality...

I'm supporting you, aren't I? (laughs). But I'm very happy. Mr. Yoshimatsu's piece, "And the Birds are Still...", is being performed by many people now.

I've benefited so much from being a Keio graduate. Especially with my work at the Kansai Philharmonic, they provide strong support because of the Keio connection. The solidarity of the Kansai Mita-kai is truly wonderful.

I hope there will continue to be various encounters within Keio. Many young people are emerging.