Songs They Were Made to Sing — When the State Mobilized Music

Until now, we have watched the era in which records and radio transformed song into ‘something for everyone.’ Popular tunes drifted through the streets, people hummed new melodies, and music dissolved into the fabric of daily life. Yet that free expansion did not last long. As the country moved toward the Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1937, and on to the Pacific War, song gradually fell into the hands of the state. What to sing and what not to sing — there came an era when that choice was governed not by the individual but by national policy. In this installment, we look at the era when song was mobilized, from both its light and its shadow, taking as our axis four developments: the boom in military songs, the exclusion of jazz branded as enemy music, the body that bound musicians together, and the visits to comfort troops at the front.

When Military Songs Became the People’s Songs

In 1937, as the Second Sino-Japanese War spread, songs taking war as their theme were born one after another. A well-known example is ‘Roei no Uta’ (Song of the Bivouac), said to have been released that same year. Singing of the feelings of soldiers who had gone off to war, this song is said to have sold 600,000 copies in half a year — exceptional for the time — and became one of the songs that defined the era. In the same year, ‘Aikoku Kōshinkyoku’ (Patriotic March) was established, its lyrics gathered through a newspaper’s public call and reportedly polished by figures such as Kitahara Hakushū and Shimazaki Tōson. The music is said to have been composed by Setoguchi Tōkichi, a former naval band leader who had also written the ‘Warship March.’

Such songs are often lumped together as ‘military songs,’ but their actual content varied. There were rousing marches, but also lyrical songs that longed for home or mourned fallen comrades. It was precisely for this reason that people were moved and sang them willingly. The closer a song drew to the people’s emotions, the more it could also become a force that sustained the will to fight — herein lies the ambivalence that wartime song carried.

What matters is that these songs were not necessarily imposed only from above. Newspapers, record companies, and radio competed to send wartime songs out into the world, and people, in turn, bought and sang them. The intentions of the state, the sentiments of the masses, and the calculations of industry were intertwined inseparably — to see it this way is, one could say, the perspective of a fair retracing of this era.

The Sounds Named as ‘the Enemy’s Music’

As the war dragged on, the spearpoint turned toward ‘the enemy’s music’ as well. Since the Meiji era, Japan had eagerly adopted Western music, and by the early Shōwa years jazz had captivated the young people of the cities. Yet as confrontation with the United States and Britain deepened, that Western music came to be named ‘enemy music.’

The shift in the wind is said to have begun even before the outbreak of war. At the end of October 1940, dance halls across the country are said to have been closed by order of the Home Ministry, and the very places where jazz played were taken away. Once the Pacific War began, jazz came to be strongly criticized as frivolous and as something that brought on decadence. In 1943, roughly a thousand items including jazz records are said to have been announced as unsuitable for performance, and voluntary cessation of performance and the surrender of records were demanded.

That said, it is also pointed out that this exclusion was not carried out completely. While the use of English was avoided as ‘enemy language’ and foreign words were paraphrased, there was latitude in how things were applied on the ground, and testimony remains that people secretly enjoyed Western music in private. The more something is forbidden, the more it survives, in fact, within the human heart. The difficulty of erasing a culture from above shows itself here too.

The Body That Bound Musicians, and the Visits to the Front

To control song and performance required a mechanism to bind together the musicians who carried them. In November 1941, the Japan Music Culture Association is said to have been founded under the supervision of the Cabinet Information Bureau and the Ministry of Education. Backed by bodies such as the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, it is said to have undertaken activities such as requiring that works by Japanese be added to performances, holding concerts for the raising of morale and the cultivation of sentiment, and dispatching musical troupes to factories.

What deserves attention is that, without joining this association, it is said to have been difficult to obtain scores or to receive the rationing of paper needed for performance. In other words, for a musician, joining the association became, in effect, a condition for continuing to be active. Rather than direct suppression, it was through the mesh of the system that freedom was narrowed — much of the control took this quiet form.

At the same time, the ‘comfort visits’ that delivered music to people at the front, in factories, and on the home front also played a major role in this era. Singers and ensembles toured the front lines, encouraging wounded soldiers and working people through song. The comfort visits carried the aspect of cooperation with the war, and at the same time they showed the power of music to sustain people’s hearts in extreme circumstances. One and the same song could be a song that sent someone off to battle, or a song that comforted someone for a brief moment. The meaning of a song shifted according to the place where it was sounded.

What the Songs That Lost Their Freedom Left Behind

Wartime musical control greatly narrowed the freedom of song. What to sing was governed by national policy, the enemy’s music was rejected by name, and musicians were woven into the mesh of the system. Seen from the era of ‘everyone’s song’ that records and radio had opened up, this was a clear regression.

And yet, we cannot simply file away what this era left behind as a dark memory. Much of the wartime song rested on the genuine emotions of the people. The longing for home, the reluctance to part, the wish to survive — those hearts themselves did not vanish when the war ended. Rather, one could say that, to the degree they had been held down, the thirst for music when released was all the greater. Control could push culture down for a time, but it could not erase the very human desire to sing.

What the war took from music, and what nevertheless remained. Carrying this contrast, song heads toward the next era. The defeat and the burnt-out ruins that would soon come. In the cities of rubble, where everything seemed lost, people nevertheless sought song once more. And as if in answer to those parched hearts, a bright, bursting rhythm — utterly unlike anything before — begins to ring out.