Nationality: Japanese

Born in Hiroshima, 1 September 1911 
Died in Tokyo, 28 December 2008 

[KOH-may AH-bay]

• Abe studied cello, composition, and conducting at the Tokyo Academy of Music.
• In addition to composing, Abe taught at the Elizabeth College of Music in Hiroshima, and at the Kyoto Municipal College of Arts.¹
• Abe composed orchestral music, chamber music and film music, and was a particularly prolific composer of string quartets.²

Learn More
Short biography from Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians

Born in Toyko, September 14, 1904 
Died in Kamakura, May 6, 1949 

Pronunciation of “Qunihico” 

The composer’s name is sometimes spelled “Kunihiko Hashimoto.” 

• Hashimoto was a Japanese composer studied at the Toyko Academy of Music, and latterly in Austria with Egon Wellesz. His studies abroad took place from 1934-1937, and also included a trip to the United States, where he studied with Schoenberg. 
• From 1937 until the close of WWII, Hashimoto taught composition at the Toyko Academy of Music. He also directed the institution’s student orchestra. 
• Hashimoto’s works include art songs influenced by Debussy, as well as large-scale orchestral pieces.³ 

Short biography from Naxos

Born in Tokyo, 19 April, 1870
Died in Tokyo, 19 March, 1946

• Nobu Kōda was a Japanese composer, violinist, and educator whose music is considered to be the first written by a Japanese composer in the Western style.
• Biography from RII’s Elevate album:
  • In the second half of the 19^th century, Western music began to play a significant role in Japan. Much like in the West, the study and knowledge of music became a signifier of social status in Japanese culture, particularly among women. One direct result of this cultural shift was the creation of the Tokyo Music School in 1887. The school promoted the benefits of music for mental health, self-expression, and critical thinking for its (mostly women) students.
    
    One of the pioneers of this Western musical influence in Japan was Nobu Kōda. After graduating from the Tokyo Music School, Kōda became the first student to receive a government grant to study abroad, first in Boston, followed by Vienna. In 1895, she returned home and joined the staff at the Tokyo Music School to teach piano, violin, singing, and composition. Unfortunately, after nearly 15 years of teaching at the institution, Kōda resigned due to rejection and criticism from her male colleagues. She spent the rest of her career instructing female members of the royal court.
    
    Remembered primarily as a teacher, Kōda’s legacy more accurately lies in her role as a musical forerunner. Her small number of extant works hold considerable historical significance as the first works written by a Japanese composer in the Western style.

Born in Sannomiya, Kobe, Japan, April 7, 1894 
Died in Kariya, Aichi prefecture, Japan, June 25, 1956 

• Miyagi was a multi-instrumentalist and composer, and particularly a master of the koto. 
• Miyagi was a professor at the Tokyo College of Music, which is now the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. 
• As a composer, Miyagi was part of a modernist movement that sought to add Western musical influences to traditional Japanese musical styles. 
• Miyagi’s work included creating innovative new instruments inspired by the koto and other traditional Japanese instruments, to increase the compositional options for Japanese music.  
• Miyagi had a disability: he lost his sight before the age of 8.⁴

Composer Website from the Miyagi Koto Association 

Born in the Kitaakita District, Akita, 15 December 1893 
Died on 29 October 1945 

• Narita was a member of the “Nursery Rhyme Movement,” a movement in art education in Japan during the Taisho period. Narita and the other composers in this movement wrote influential children’s songs partly inspired by Western nursery rhymes.⁵
• Narita graduated in 1917 from the National School of Music in Tokyo,⁶ and subsequently studied music in Berlin from 1922-1926. He was one of several Japanese composers who visited Germany and other Western nations to music in the 1920s-40s.⁷
• In the early twentieth century, Japan saw a flourishing movement of new poetry for children, often disseminated in literary journals for children. Narita’s music was sometimes also distributed this way. In her introduction to Yuki Ohta’s A Rainbow in the Desert: An Anthology of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Children’s Literature, Joan E. Ericson tells how the text of “Canary,” one of Narita’s well-known songs, was first published in the journal Akai tori in 1918, a few months later, the same journal published Narita’s song setting of the poem. Ericson refers to Narita as “a famous composer of children’s songs.”⁸

Born in Tokyo, Oct 8, 1930 
Died in Tokyo, Feb 20, 1996

• Takemitsu was an innovative, mostly self-taught Japanese composer whose music blends modernist Western styles Japanese traditional music and instruments. 
• Takemitsu’s first encounter with Western music came while he was serving as a conscripted member of the Japanese military in WWII: his officer played a recording of a French popular song for a group of conscripts. French music would go on to be a huge influence for Takemitsu, especially the music of Debussy and Messaien. 
• In the 1950s, Takemitsu and several other composers formed a group called Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop) to explore avant-garde multimedia projects. 
• Takemitsu’s music began to find audiences outside Japan when Stravinksy heard his Requiem for Strings (composed 1957) in 1959, and declared it a masterpiece. 
• Takemitsu was also an influential essayist and writer on music.¹¹ 

Profile on Takemitsu from Schott Music 

Guide to Takemitsu’s music from The Guardian 

Born in Tokyo, June 9, 1886 
Died in Tokyo, Dec 29, 1965 

• Yamada was a Japanese composer, orchestral conductor, and educator.
• Yamada attended at the Tokyo Music School, and then studied composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. His music shows a significant influence from late German romanticism. 
• After his studies in Germany, Yamada sometimes used the somewhat Germanic name of Kósçak as a variation of his Japanese given name, Kōsaku.¹⁶
• Yamada founded the Tokyo Philharmonic Society Orchestra (which is a different organization than that which current operates under that same name) and directed this ensemble in Japan’s first-ever professional classical orchestral concert in 1915. In addition to his work in Japan, Yamada’s conducting career also took him abroad, including conducting a concert of his compositions at Carnegie Hall in 1918. 
• Yamada composed more than 1600 works, including operas, tone poems, songs, and chamber works. As a composer, he was particularly interested in finding a musical language well suited to the rhythms of the Japanese language.  
• Tragically, a large number of Yamada’s compositions were destroyed in the air raid that targeted Tokyo on May 25, 1945.¹⁷

Short biography from Naxos 

Born in Hita City, Japan, 1925 
Died in 2009 

• Yocoh is a Japanese guitarist and arranger best known for his set of variations on the folk tune Sakura.¹⁸

The composer’s website is in Japanese, but it contains some fascinating photos of the composer over the course of his life.  

I have run his bio through Google Translate and derived the following information. Please take it with a grain of salt, because I do not know Japanese – however, Yocoh’s site is by far the most thorough source of information available about him online.

• Yocoh reports that he met Segovia during the guitarist’s visit to Japan in 1959. He also writes that Segovia’s performance in Japan, the first of a classical guitarist in that country since WWII, was an influential experience for him. He says he worked on learning Spanish just so he could speak with Segovia. 
  • Here’s a photo of Yocoh with Segovia, as well as lots of photos from the composer’s life and career. 
• Yocoh’s most famous work, his set variations on Sakura, has been recorded by a plethora of classical guitarists, including John Williams and Angel Romero. 
• Yocoh writes that in addition to composing, he enjoys arranging preexisting classical works for the guitar, and that he values the artistic satisfaction of creating handwritten music manuscripts.