The Arrival of Tango in Japan: Allure, Fear, and Morality in Early Twentieth-Century Japan – with Yuiko Asaba

In the early twentieth-century, Argentine tango arrived in Japan as a critical part of the country’s modernisation. Since that fatal moment, its foreign, provocative allure – a music that ‘originated’ far, far away in Argentina – spiced with a hint of romanticised ‘low-life’ imaginaries, has continued to capture Japanese people’s hearts and curiosity across the social classes. Japanese performers embraced this exogenous genre as a vehicle of expressivity. Devotees have digested its knowledge, creating and nourishing a distinctly Japanese tango culture. The sounds of tango provided comfort and a sense of hope to many during the most turbulent years of the twentieth century. In over a century of history in Japan, tango has entered the hearts and accompanied the lives of many Japanese people.

 

Crucially, however, tango’s initial arrival in Japan in the early twentieth-century was through Britain, after tango had been accepted into the Western higher social strata as a morally agreeable dance-music. Tango thus brought with it in Japan its own social contexts of tensions between social classes. Above all, in spite of its acceptance into the Western high societies tango’s ‘morally suspect’ associations had never left its image. Taking a closer look at the early reception of tango and the development of regulations on tango in Japan at this time reveals intriguing historical details of allure, fear, and morality.

 

Yuiko Asaba is Tutor in Music at the University of Oxford, and Visiting Lecturer of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is now completing her monograph on Tango in Japan for University of Hawai’i Press, part of which will be published in Japanese as a chapter in an edited volume (edited by Yusuke Wajima) with Minerva Shobo. Her article on Tango and emotions in Japan is also forthcoming. Yuiko’s current research looks at the relationship between Japan’s migration politics and tango in the early twentieth-century. She is also a Tango violinist and has worked as a member of the National Orchestra of Argentine Music (Argentina), Tango Orchestra Astrorico (Japan), and has recorded award-winning albums. Yuiko received her PhD in Music in 2017 from Royal Holloway, University of London.

 

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