Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

From September 4-5, 2004, the forth annual conference of Japanese Music Therapy Association was held in Kurashiki-city. For this conference we had the two key-note speakers from abroad, Brynjulf Stige and Colin Lee. Stige's lecture was about "Community Music Therapy," and Lee's was about "Aesthetic Music Therapy. " It was a long waited opportunity for a group of Japanese music therapists who have been keen to the forefront of international music therapy scene, to hear these lectures and to meet the speakers.

I was one of them, and fully enjoyed the opportunities. At the same time I was personally interested in experiencing "Community Music Therapy" lecture with a general audience of Japanese music therapy, and to feel their realistic reactions to the concept, because the "community" in Japanese culture has always fascinated and puzzled me. Of course it was not easy (for anyone) to grasp the theory in just one lecture, but my impression was that Stige's presentation gave a feeling of "release" to us: Release from our unconscious self-criticism for not being "individual-oriented treatment" in our music therapy sessions.

The mentality of Japanese society is, needless to say the historical influence from the emphasis on group work in agriculture, much more community-oriented than the European/American, and so it is in music therapy. And many of the Japanese music therapists have a vague ideal for a work to "be connected as a community through musical activity". But it is not easy to express/actualize it academically because of the influence from the Western tradition of "individual oriented therapy". It almost feels that our culture does not respect individuals enough, and of course there is one facet of that in our cultural dilemma. However it does not mean that we can or should ignore our long history of "community feeling." In addition, along with Japanese society changing rapidly, the community mentality is also changing its appearance and the functions in a complex way. In order to deal with the theme of "community", one needs something much more than just a nostalgie feeling to it. Given these situations, Stige's key-note lecture gave us a sort of confidence and "sure" feeling for the community based work in our music therapy sessions. It is interesting that we received the foundation to face with our own tradition from a foreign theorist.

Stige also gave a lecture in the university I work at (Tokyo National University for Fine Arts), which was a more crystallized presentation for a small group of students (in music therapy, musicology, others). Here are summary of some comments from the students:

"I have been lost in the concepts to look at music therapy merely as 'treatment ' for an 'individual'". Your concept of 'music as milieu' supports my original idea for music therapy, 'music for being connected.'"

"Your talk was very nutritious for me to establish a philosophy which is necessary to be a music therapist and also as a person who lives in this society. I felt sympathized and fascinated with the three elements of community music therapy; to be connected with people, to be a unique individual, and to enjoy."

"The essence of culture-centered music therapy seems to be summarized in the simple but magic words you said: 'it depends'-This attitude will open up the narrow dead-ending thinking in any kind of studies".

These comments reflect the younger generations' search for the possibilities to live both as an individual and in a community. Now I am excited to see how the seeds Stige's theory has sowed will grow in our culture.

After Stige's lecture at the university, I and the two graduate students (one Japanese, one Belgian) explored the old downtown Asakusa with him, which still keeps the variety of folk culture of Japan.shops of Buddhism ceremonial instruments including Japanese drums, Sensoji-Temple, traditional souvenir shopping street, and the "100-yen shop"! 100-yen shop is a sort of cultural trend in Japan these years, where one can buy a tremendously wide range of life goods with just one coin. Usually it sells daily life goods, but this shop in Asakusa had a small corner of Japanese traditional souvenir, and the foreign traveler Stige found a miniature of Shishiodoshi [1]! He was delighted to be able to bring it home and explain the traditional sound scape instrument which he was very much impressed with in his Kyoto trip. I enjoyed the gap among his aesthetic experience in Kyoto, 100 yen, and the indication of "made in China" on the product. All these mixed, and somewhat economically bent phenomenon is "culture in Japan today," and so it is with "community", I thought. It reminded me that the "community" is not some ideas thought on the desk but the real activities in the world.

This "reality" feeling refers to another episode I experienced with Stige's visit this time. In our conversation with the graduate students, he found out that it was the Voices which made the Belgian graduate student find me as a Japanese music therapist from the other side of the globe and decide to study in the Japanese university I work at. He was so pleased to see a concrete example of the global connection and communication made possible by the Voices. It is strange, though, that we often don't feel it realistically when we are actually working on the internet, in spite of it is the internet that is enabling it. We find the fruit of internet communication in the world of non-internet, and I think it should be so.

Let me approach this subject from another angle. It has been three years since the Voices started, but it was the first opportunity for me to see Stige as an editor-in-chief in person. And it was unbelievable how much this experience refreshed my vision as an editor of the Voices, even though it was just a few days we spent time together. Before, the information I had about "Dr. Stige" was his book titles, work position, published papers, and the pictures with curly hairs-sometimes round, sometimes flat. Now I know "Brynjulf" as a person because I have had a short but rich time of experiences with him. And the important thing is that this knowledge is much more applicable when I think how he would think/feel/say. It seems to be connected with the world of "imagination."

A living imaginative work in any areas is born not from the collection of information, but from the knowledge, and it is especially so in a area like music therapy. I believe this knowledge is about human-beings and how they live their lives (=application of the knowledge). Therefore it is never too much to emphasize that we should not walk aloof from what is happening in the realities of human-beings. But how it is difficult to keep that sense in today's world! The key here seems to me experiences. Hearing Stige' lectures and meeting him in person in Japan (which is my realistic world), many interesting issues in me started to connect each other.

Note

[1] A simple devise for Japanese gardens made of bamboo that makes a sound to threaten and drive deer away. Now it is loved also as a sound-scape instrument.

How to cite this page

Ikuno, Rika (2004). Realities, Information, Experiences and Knowledge: Reflecting Stige's Visit to Japan. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 09, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2004-realities-information-experiences-and-knowledge-reflecting-stiges-visit-jap