Tōru Takemitsu᾽s "Spherical Mirror:" The Influences of Shūzō Takiguchi and Fumio Hayasaka on his Early Music in Postwar Japan

Abstract

The music of Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996) eludes understanding by traditional musical analytical approaches. In his earlier works, the musical language Takemitsu employed is influenced by Debussy, Webern, and particularly Messiaen; however, his music defies successful analyses by Western analytical methods, mainly to find an organizational force that unifies the composition as a whole. In this essay, I illuminate how his music was made to be "Japanese-sounding," even though Takemitsu clearly resisted association with, and was averse to, Japanese traditional culture and quality when he was younger. I do this by examining Takemitsu᾽s friendship with two individuals whom he met during his early age, who influenced Takemitsu at an internal level and helped form his most basic inner voice. The close friendship Takemitsu developed as a young composer with Shūzō Takiguchi (1903-1979), an avant-garde surrealist poet and also a mentor to many forward-looking artists, and Fumio Hayasaka (1914-1955), a fellow composer best known for his score to Akira Kurosawa᾽s film Rashōmon, is little known outside Japan. In this essay, I discuss the following issues: 1) how Takiguchi᾽s experimental ideas might have manifested themselves in Takemitsu᾽s early compositions; and 2) how Hayasaka᾽s mentorship, friendship, and ideals of the nature of Japanese concert music might have influenced Takemitsu᾽s early pieces. I analyze some earlier compositions by Takemitsu to discuss the influences on his music by his two mentors, whose attitudes seemingly had come from opposite spectrums.