Thoughts on "Experience of Space in Japan." Implications for Music Therapy
Abstract
This article presents thoughts on the experience of space, developed from a research study I have been doing during two years immersed in a very singular context where the familiar university environment contrasted with the – for me – completely unknown Japanese culture. The research study explains my motivation as well as my theme of the research: "the experience of space." The influence that my situation of being immersed in Japanese culture had on my hypothesis and research process are also developed. The study introduces some aspects of my experience of space in two different contexts: the context of everyday life experiences in Japan and the context of the butoh dance. Each context helped me to discover aspects of the experience of space, and possible implications for the music therapy context are then developed. In the study I sum up some of the discoveries underlining the negative and positive aspects this research process has led to. Finally, I evoke the learning of "humility," which is the dimension of the process most difficult to share in this article. The research study brought up some interesting subjects to investigate more in the future. One important discovery was the interdependency between perception and language (as a part of culture) and the way this implies a special attention in the music therapy context. Another interesting remark concerns the concept of boundary, and I argue that the Japanese concept of "Ma" is precious in relation to the therapeutic challenge of approaching this concept with an open mind.
Decision to Leave for Japan. To Research Isn’t It to Keep Challenging the Mind?
After finishing a music therapy degree in my own country Belgium, I refused a very interesting job in that field and decided to leave to make research in a far away island called "Japan." My motivation – in the sense of "what makes someone in motion" – was not rooted in a passion for that country but in an intuition about what should be "a research." I remembered my feeling of deception concerning some of my university teachers who had done research during their whole life but seemed to have stopped when they reached one big discovery. This discovery, then, became the subtitle of their life as well as their classes, and 10 years later, we hear the same thing while the world keeps changing.
That was what finally convinced me to go where I would never think to go, Japan, instead of accepting the proposed job that would probably have confirmed my own education instead of challenging it. Depending on their personalities, some people tend to look for challenge while others try to avoid it. For the music therapist whose first instrument is him/herself, it seems to me that the concept of challenge has nothing to do with something to like or dislike. To challenge oneself is a necessity, it is a way to know our limits and keep our mind as open as possible to the unexpected.
Master Thesis about the "Experience of Space." My Research Process Strongly Influenced by my Situation in Japan
I finally got a grant and entered the master program of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music in the applied musicology department where research is performed and classes about music therapy are held.
The thesis I wrote, after 3 years in that environment, deals with the "experience of space" (Mairiaux, 2006). More precisely speaking, I used my own experience of space while being immersed in Japanese culture, as a metaphor to think about the experience of space in the music therapy context. I knew that a comparative study between the Japanese experience of space and the European experience of space both within the music therapy context (and that context only) would be somewhat easier. But I had a strong intuition that, even if my own experience of space in Japan was not always directly related to the music therapy context, both contexts had some interesting similarities. My hypothesis became that my experience of space used as a frame or a metaphor would allow me to look back to the music therapy work with new eyes.
Looking back with some distance, I understand, now, how much some unusual aspects of my situation in Japan seem to have had a decisive influence on my hypothesis and the whole research process.
The idea to make a research based on my own experience came to my mind because of the language difficulty. Not being able to speak or understand what was said around me was one cause of my deep interest in going to Japan. I wanted to see how I would adapt myself, how my own perceptions and emotions would change, how I would relate to others. But at the same time, these poor communicational abilities made the usual researcher’s sources such as literature and conversational communication with Japanese music therapists completely out of reach for a while.
My choice to use the experience of space while being immersed in Japanese culture as a base for my research instead of making a comparative study has been influenced by self-observation. It seems to me much easier to be flexible and open when I am in a completely unknown environment than when I have to deal with what looks familiar but is in fact different because of cultural value’s differences. My own experience in music therapy seems to be an obstacle when I assisted some Japanese music therapy sessions! Despite my good will, I realized that I was analyzing the situation in reference to my own frames and in many cases, I stayed confused, not willing to hurt their feelings but not knowing how to debate (cf. the language problem) about what was disturbing my own value system.
On the other hand, I realized I could stand incomprehensible situations when they were different in ways that made comparison with something I knew before irrelevant. Then I could be rather patient and curious, open and careful…and then often real meetings happened.
For this reason, I based my research on the experience of space I had during my immersion in Japanese culture, especially in three contexts: 1. Daily life, 2. Meeting butoh[1] dancers, 3. Experiencing kagura[2] performances. These three contexts brought me some interesting discoveries and they had rich parallels with the experience of space in a music therapy context. I would like to share some of my discoveries with you.
Experience of Space in Daily Life: Interdependency between Language as a part of Culture and the Perception System
Because most of the people immersed in a different culture cannot speak the language, they naturally experience some primitive fears and re-discover the full use of their whole perception system as a tool of information and communication. For example, I realized that I remembered my way in Tokyo thanks to smell, noise and ground texture, and not by reading street signs! This strong experience reminded me that the whole perception process (the perception of space being one part of it) works unconsciously in casual situations and is very much based on sight in modern societies. But the important discovery I had this time was how much language (as a part of the culture) and the perception of space (my focus in the thesis) would be interdependent. For example, even if two people focus, silently in the same room, on physical elements (concrete space), they would not perceive it the same way because perception is the result of processes of data selection and organization according to mental frames. And these frames are related to their culture, environment and personality[3]... Many of you probably know that; but for the first time I realized how consequential this will be for my work.
Music therapy has grown in many cases in response to problems encountered with verbal therapy. We find so many articles related to the universal quality of music, the way music is able to reach all the people beyond languages and cultural differences. That is true, but only partially so. To me, music is, among other tools, a precious kind of language with specific qualities. But we should not forget that music is also the product of a culture. Both universal and culturally rooted qualities are part of the music, what Benenzon (2000, pp. 78-79) calls universal ISO and cultural ISO[4], and should be used carefully in sessions. Because music activates the whole perception system (and not just the audition as some might think), it also has the ability to reach a more unconscious part of a person. That is a very precious quality in music therapy while at the same time, makes the music therapy process a very special time and space that needs proper setting.
Experience of Space in Butoh Dance: A Special Concept of Boundary
Through meetings with butoh dancers, I came to think the relation between concrete space and mental space with a different perspective, thanks to their concept of boundary. To experience a butoh dance performance is always something disturbing in the way time and space are transformed. The dancer looks like a baby, then, a second later, like an old man before dying; more impressive, the movement of their bodies seems to enter your brain and touch you in the back; however the stage is one meter far from the audience… To be myself in Japan and to have the opportunity to talk to the dancers helped me to understand these strange impressions. I was not the only one who had it.
If butoh dance is an important part of the avant-garde artistic scene, it is also a movement deeply rooted in some very traditional Japanese concept such as the concept of "Ma." The "Ma" is a complex concept that can be found at the base of many traditional arts in Japan; it is a way to think about interval between things and beings but without separating time and space.[5] Very interested, I started trying to think about boundary in a similar way: something that limit, divide the space and at the same time also link it.
From articles and books such as the recent "Buto(s)" (Aslan & Picon-Vallin, 2002), you might think that butoh dancers try to abolish, through dance, the boundaries between the self and others, the inside and the outside…etc. Many people tired of being under pressure of from the ideas of "self-made-man" or of "becoming someone" will be attracted by such words as "self negation." In the same way one can idealize the Japanese concept of group when he has to live himself in competition and individualism. Relating to this subject, let me present the work of butoh in a different way.
Because all their work is deeply rooted in the body, the butoh dancers are extraordinarily sensitive to the limits between concrete spaces such as, for example, the limit formed by the skin that separate the self from others and the world. It is similar to the way Anzieu (1985) created the concept "Le Moi-Peau" (The Self-Skin). Butoh dancers know that the concrete limits need to be integrated in the mental space to be effectively existing for the individual. It is because they have fully accomplished this process that they can play with the boundaries[6] in order to express the energy of life. It is this unusual mental play, incarnated in the butoh dancers’ movements, which make their dance so unique and disturbing.
In the Music Therapy Context: Thinking about the Boundary Concept Received from my Experience of Space with Butoh Dance
In music therapy, the concept directly dealing with the notions of space and boundaries is the setting. At first, we think about the setting in terms such as choice and disposal of physical elements in the space. Thanks to my experience of "language out of reach" in Japan, I understand more deeply why Benenzon (2000, pp. 78-79) – who works a lot with autistic children and created a method of music therapy in non-verbal context – gives a special attention to the setting of the concrete space such as the room and its communicational qualities, the instruments themselves…etc. Indeed, in such a context, these elements are the main source of information for the client and will have a decisive influence on his action. For this reason, the setting of the concrete space should be considered by the music therapist as a non-verbal instruction, in the same way he uses verbal instruction in other contexts.
But the setting has also something to do with the relational space between the client and the music therapist. The consistence of the material but also the consistence of the music therapist in terms of attitude and presence are the rules, the boundaries of a certain frame, the therapeutic frame. It is that frame that gives the physical and psychical protection and containment of qualities in the relational space and makes the session different from daily life. The music used, played and created inside that frame should therefore always be interpreted in relation to it.
For any exchange and communication to develop in the relational space, the building of the self – such as developed in Winnicott’s work (1971) – is a necessary step. That step makes the difference between some autistic child not really knowing that "he is" different from others and the world,, and butoh dancers that play with self and other’s boundaries. I have also discovered in Japan that even when the self is well build, it remains flexible and fragile. Without access for a long time to language (that is the royal access to the society), and without other humans to recognize that you are existing, anyone could gradually lose these boundaries we have built between us and others, between dreams, thought and spoken words. In less abstract words, I sharply remember the "feeling of being erased" I had after 5 days without meaningful verbal exchange, alone in Tokyo, and the urge I had to have someone not next to me (Tokyo is a crowded city) but someone who would show, in a way or another, that he recognizes me as a human.
As they are also musicians, music therapists might be sensitive enough to listen and be present to the screaming silences of people in need of a "space to exist."
As a Conclusion
It seems clear that my choice of using my own experience of space in Japan as a frame to think about a completely different context such as music therapy has good and bad aspects to conduct a research.
Because contexts are so different, we can only make parallels and comparisons but, of course, never apply one context to the other. In that sense, I would like to apologize to the readers in search for new and important discoveries in the field of music therapy as they might be very disappointed by this article. Many subjects that I presented here can be found with clearer and more scientific explanations in books written by specialists concerning the vast subject of the "experience of space."
However, I think this research brought an interesting subject to investigate more in the future. One important discovery was the interdependency between language (as a part of the culture) and perception, and the way this implies a special attention in the music therapy context in order not to forget that "not using the words" will not erase the belonging of each human to a specific culture and related mental frame.
Another interesting remark concerns the concept of boundary. In butoh dance as well as in music therapy, there is the necessity to have boundaries in both the mental and the physical space in order for something to happen: it is the physical boundary of the setting in music therapy; it is also the physical boundary of the skin and the recognition of the mental boundary of the body and the self that allow the dancer to be in a relation with the audience, and allow the client to interact with the therapist.
Because music therapy deals with the life of human beings and because Life is made by paradoxes, I think the Japanese concept of "Ma" is a precious way to think about the concept of boundary with an open mind: something that divides the space and at the same time links it.
To be honest, probably the most precious learning I had from this research has to do with its process and is actually difficult to share through an article because it is about my own personal experience that sometimes words hardly translate. By focusing and thinking on the research process (and not only on the result) this research led me to challenge my mind and preconceived ideas in a deep way. By meeting people from many different contexts, it made me think about research with more humor and distance. Isn’t that wonderful to see humans trying to understand, to control, to analyze… what sometimes just cannot be. This impossible knowledge that is also at the same time what makes us running after, talking about, making seminars…Far from despair, but with a sweet irony, I keep as a precious gift the moments shared at night in the mountains watching kagura, the dance of the gods, with a cup of sake in the hand. Though I was (and still am) a foreigner, at these moments, I could feel the same feeling of fear and respect, what could be called "humility" in front of what is bigger than humans, whatever each culture might call it.
Notes
[1] Butoh (sometimes written butô) is the collective name for a diverse range of techniques and motivations for dance inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery performed in white-body makeup but there is no set style. Its origins have been attributed to Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno from Japan.
[2] Kagura ("the dance of the gods") is a Japanese word referring to a specific type of Shinto dances — the oldest known to this day. Ka is from the word kami ("god(s)") and the dance is an ancient Shinto ritual.
[3] For those interested in mental organization of the space I recommend to have a look on E. T. Hall’s work that is part of my thesis but couldn’t be explained here (Hall, 1971).
[4] ISO = Identite SOnore (Sound Identity) is a concept according to which each individual has his own unique sound identity created by his heredity, his sound history before he/she was born, every sound elements of his life, his sound education related to his country and his culture…The sound identity is a dynamic process which keeps changing trough the whole life. R. Benenzon distinguishes 5 forms of ISO: gestalt ISO, complementary ISO, group ISO, cultural ISO, and universal ISO. The two last forms are the one I focus upon in this chapter. Cultural ISO means the aspect of the sound identity originated from the sound ambiance of our culture. While the Universal ISO means the aspect of the sound identity that are common to every humans such as the sound of the heart beat.
[5] For example in the Japanese musical language, "ma" will represent the silent interval between two beats that should be respected to keep the rhythm and the melody, and that interval is effective in time (it has a duration) and space (the physical movement of the drummer).
[6] Quotation from the interview of the butoh dancer Seisaku realised by Isabelle Mairiaux and Udagawa Masaharu in Tokyo 2005.
References
Anzieu. D. (1985/n ed.1995). Le Moi Peau [The Self-Skin]. Paris: Dunod.
Aslan, O. & Picon-Vallin, B. (2002). Buto(s), Arts du spectacle. CNRS Editions.
Benenzon, R. (2000). Espacio vincular in Musicoterapia. De la teoria a la practica. Ed Paidos.
Hall, E. T. (1971). The Hidden Dimension, Ed Seuil.
Mairiaux, I. (2006). 「音楽療法における空間の体験」. Unpublished master thesis.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications.
Comments to this essay:
- Elizabeth Teczar, December 11, 2006.
