A Large Generation Gap Must be Taken Into Account in the Consideration of the Effects of Music Therapy in Japan
By Kenichi Matunami
Abstract
We studied the effects of music upon human emotion with ESA-16, a special computer soft ware program for the analysis of human emotion from EEG. Subjects were 6 old and 8 healthy adult person. Four songs were selected as test music, all of which are very familiar to the old. Their titles were "Furusato", "Akogareno Hawaii-kouro", "Saitarou-busi" and "Kagewositaite". They were chosen because we used them very often in our recipe (repertoire) of music therapy for old person. ESA-16 enabled us to analyze EEG into four components of emotion; Anger/Stress, Joy, Sadness and Relaxation in a pseudo-real time manner. The experiments with ESA-16 revealed that the old person showed a significant decrease in Anger/Stress and an increase in Joy during listening to "Furusato", and a decrease in Sadness and an increase in Relaxation while listening to "Saitarou-busi" with significance. On the other hand, no significant emotional changes were observed in the adult subjects while listening to all four music. For the explanation of these facts, we offered a proposition that the difference in emotional changes observed while listening to four test songs was produced by a large generation gap lying between the old and the adult. This generation gap was produced by the drastic cultural and educational changes since the occupation by the USA, after the unconditional surrender of Japan to the Allied Forces in 1945. This year marks the critical demarcation in producing the large generation gap in Japan. From this time on, the adult are educated under the new democratic system, while the old remained completely in the past as the remains of absolutism and feudalism.
Background of Consideration
When we consider the attitude of the present culture in Japan, we should take into account the generation gap lying between the old and the people younger than them (I will use the adult for the young generation in the present paper). Music constitutes a very important part of culture, and hence we should take the generation gap into account when we consider music therapy in Japan.
At first, we should define the generation gap in Japan in relation to music therapy. It is defined as this: the gap lyses at the year of 1945 when Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces, composed of the USA, Great Britain, France, Holland, Soviet, China and many others, including even Switzerland and Italy too!
After that time, Japan was occupied by the USA, and controlled under the GHQ (General Head Quarter), headed by General McArthur. Under his directions, the old constitutions of Japan was changed to new ones, as is known "the Constitution of Peace", which is world wide very famous because it declared not to hold the national military power. Also through the spirit of the new constitution, a new educational system was introduced. (Please compare to Germany. They refused to accept both propositions). Both renewals induced the tremendous change in the mental, spiritual as well as moral attitudes of Japanese.
This is what I am saying, the generation gap between the pre- and post-war generations, in other common words, between the old and the adult plus young generations. By the way I stand just on the critical border line separating between them, with the experience educated by both old and new educational systems. Therefore, I can evaluate the good and the bad of both systems. It is a very valuable experience, I think.
I will return to the main stream of my discussion. When I surveyed our data gained from our preliminary experiments on the effects of music used in our music therapy for old persons, I came to have an impression that the generation gap can not totally be neglected in the consideration about the effects of the songs used in music therapy, particularly in Japan. The idea emerged due to the method used in our experiments. That method enabled us to analyze changes of emotion into four major emotional components in a pseudo-real time manner; the components of pleasure, anger, sadness and joy (In our term, pleasure/stress, anger, sadness and relaxation). The details of the methods were already published elsewhere, and the reader may consult the references (Musha et al., 2000).
In our music therapy, subjects were mostly old persons. At the time we perform our music therapy, we always think over what kinds of music (e.g., songs) is the most effective for each client, and selected such songs into our repertoire as we believed them to be the most effective. Of course, the taste for music is different from one person to another, and yet some music is liked as favorite songs among many old persons.
On the other hand, it is a common and large problem for every music therapist whether or not the selected songs in the repertoire are really the most appropriate ones for clients in the practical sense. To solve this problem, some music therapists gained the insights from the results of psychological research. In a similar manner, they often relay on the "Iso-principle" of Altschuler (1941, 1945). The music list proposed by Poldosky (1954) also enriched the list of the recipe of music therapy. Both propositions are really great guides when we clinically perform music therapy. However, I still wonder if there is a more objective way to evaluate the effects of music on human emotion. Along this line of inquiry, EEG has long been employed in the evaluation of the effects of music therapy. As is well known, however, EEG could not provide satisfactory and clear-cut results in the evaluation of emotional effects of songs used in music therapy. This is largely due to the innate nature of EEG; in most emotional analysis by EEG, a relative amount of alpha-waves are important determinants, but alpha-waves themselves can not tell anything about the real nature of emotion; for example, anger/stress, pleasure, sadness, or relaxation. However, recently, Musha and his colleagues succeeded in the development of a new method to abstract, from EEG, the temporal changes of emotion into four emotional factors of anger/stress, pleasure, sadness and relaxation in a pseudo-real time manner (Musha et al., 2000). In their development, they used very complicated and sophisticated mathematical algorithms through computer soft-ware, named ESA-16 (Emotional Spectrum Analyzer 16; EEGs were recorded from 16 channels).Please consult their original papers for the details of the method of ESA-16. We used this ESA-16 in our preliminary study of the music therapy for old person (Okumura et al., 2005).
Upon the analysis of EEG data with ESA16, we found an interesting difference between the old and the adult for the perception of the music tested. The old showed more affective change than the adult for listening to the music (Okumura et.al. 2005), with the conclusion that the memory of the music produced such differences. However, when I inspected again the results, I came to another conclusion that the difference could be attributed to a great generation gap lying between the old and the adult in the present Japan. In this paper, we will discuss this point, and will offer a new proposition that the difference observed between the old and the adult in our study could alternatively originate from the great generation gap between the old and the adult in Japan.
Experimental Data
At first, we will demonstrate our EEG experimental results obtained from the old and the adult with using ESA-16 (Okumura et al., 2005). Figure 1 shows a pseudo-real time expression of temporal changes of four emotional factors of Anger, /Stress, Pleasure, Sadness and Relaxation, when a subject was listening to four test songs; their titles were Furusato (f), Akogareno-Hawaii-kouro (a), Saitarou-busi (t) and Kagewositaite (k). When I dare to translate these Japanese titles into English, they were as followings; My home land (or "Das Heimat" in German), an admirable liner line to Hawaii, A beautiful Matsushima islands and Eternal lover.
In Figure 1, the ordinate expresses, in arbitrary unit, the amount of change in emotion during listening to music. Four blocks were attributed to four emotional factors of Anger stress (N1), Pleasure (P), Sadness (N2) and Relaxation in this order. Positive nature is attributed to Pleasure (P) and Relaxation, hence with Abbreviation of P. Similarly, negative characters are attributed to Anger/Stress (N1) and Sadness (N2), hence with abbreviations of N1 and N2. The abscissa is time with 5.12 time bin. The subject was exposed to four songs, starting from Furusato (f), Akogareno-Hawaii-kouro (a), Saitarou-busi (t) and Kagewositaite (k) in this order. Before presentation of each test song, the subject was asked to close his eyes for 3 minutes, which served as a control period, indexed as zero (0) in frames. When the subject finished listening to the test music, he was asked to reply to psychological inquires. This period is illustrated as one (1) in Figure 1. Also abbreviations of test music (f, a, t, k) were simultaneously illustrated. As the amount of changes in emotion (in the ordinate), scaled into five steps in arbitrary unit, showed a wide distribution from one subject to another. This made it impossible to compare directly among the subjects. Hence we defined a new variable Z, normalized with ( m-xi/σ), where m is the mean value, xi is variable (x) of subject (i) expressed by arbitrary unit, and σis standard deviation. After this procedure, we could make a direct comparison among the subjects. Figure 2 and 3 showed the results obtained by this way. Figure 2 shows the results for the old (n=6), and Figure 3 showed the results for the adult (n=8).
The left side of Figure 2 shows the results for Negative component of emotion, N1 (Anger/Stress) and N2 (Sadness), and on the right side, those of Positive component of P (Pleasure) and Relaxation. In Figure 2 from the old, it is demonstrated that N1 significantly decreased during listening to Furusato (f) and also N1 during Saitarou-busi (t). Meanwhile, there was a significant increase in P (Pleasure) during listening to Furusato (f). A moderate increase in relaxation was observed for Saitarou-busi (t). It may be worthwhile to mention that N1 and N2 showed decreasing trends in all four test music. On the other hand, in the experiments with the adult, no significant changes were observed, with the exception of a significant increase in Relaxation observed while listening to Saitarou-busi (t). Hereafter we are going to discuss the difference observed in the old and the adult from the view point of generation gap.
Discussion and Proposition
We analyzed effects of music on human emotion through EEG with ESA-16 (Emotion Spectrum Analyzer 16) for the following four songs; Furusato (f; My Home Land (Meine Haimat in German)), Akogareno Hawaii-kouro (a; Admirable Liner Line to Hawaii), Saitarou-busi (t; Beautiful Matsushima Islands) and Kagewositaite (k; My Eternal Lover).These four songs are a kind of popular songs which have been loved and liked for a long time among many Japanese, during the time of pre- and post war periods when the present old persons were exposed to these songs in the midst of the climax of their adolescence and childhood. The analysis revealed a difference between the old and the adult for the effects of the music on emotion. The old (mostly over 70 year's olds) showed more emotional effects than the adults for this music.
This could be explained in two ways. The most common explanation is that memory of the music plays a very important factor in producing emotional effects, when the music is the one that is very familiar to persons during their adolescence and childhood, as Okumura and her colleagues pointed out in their paper (2005). The other way is to propose that differential effects of the music upon the old and the adults could be attributed to the generation gap lying between them. We will start with the consideration about the generation gap.
The so called generation gap exists universally, of course, through out all countries. It is never socially a special cultural phenomenon. However, the generation gap in Japan is very unique, at least, it seems to me. I will employ it as my standpoint in the following discussion.
Japan was defeated by the Allied Forces in the summer of 1945. From that time, Japanese cultural traditions were dramatically changed before and after this year. From this time on up to 1952 until the Treaty of Peace with Japan (in San Francisco), Japan was mainly occupied by the American Army (USA Army) under the control of General Macarthur. The USA organized the GHQ (General Head Quarter) headed by him. The important and influential programs performed by the GHQ were two points; the construction of entirely new constitutions (so called famous "Peace Constitutions), and the introduction of a new educational system under the name of Democracy. Democracy itself is never a bad ideology. Truly Japan has enjoyed the rich fruits of this idea. However, the occult aim of the programs was terrible; an infusion of ""War Guilt Information (of Japan)" into the Japanese people through education, leading to the acceptance of the conception that the war conducted by Japan was completely wrong and criminal against Democracy. Also this trend was further strengthened by the strong ideological influence by the communism from the Soviet Union and Red China. These two great ideology, Democracy and Communism (or simply called the left and right in Japan) completely upset the hitherto traditional Japanese identity as invaluably old and harmful; Absolutism reigned by Japanese Emperor (Tennou), with strong support of the Japanese army. Even Kabuki, as famous traditional Japanese drama, was denied as promoting war, typically symbolized by a "Hara-kiri" scene. Also Judou and Japanese sward fencing were prohibited as sports inspiring war. In line with this trend, traditional Japanese old songs or popular songs lost their chances to be educated or played in schools or towns (Please refer to Koizumi (1977) for traditional Japanese music). Japanese traditional and most popular instruments, koto or shamisen, were replaced by the piano or violin in common cultural music education. Koto is an instrument with 13 strings and shamisen, with three strings. To learn the two instruments was the most common and traditional habits for girls or young ladies, before marriage, to enrich their common sense or elegant social manner in the pre-war period in Japan, continued from the Edo period. Similarly boys and the youth changed overwhelmingly to the guitar as their favorite instrument instead of the shamisen or shakuhati (Japanese "bamboo flute") or a tuzumi (a small dram). Similarly, hand in hand, the real Japanese traditional popular songs almost perished. For examples, Oiwake (songs for walking during small trips or rambling), Umaoi (songs for field work with horses), Taue-uta (farmer's song, for implanting rice seedlings in the rice field filled with water). Japanese people made tearful efforts to Americanize themselves. That attitude was considered as modern and progressive, while singing traditional Japanese old songs were looked down upon as feudalism and out of date. There was also another kind of Japanese traditional small songs, handed down from the Edo period: Kiyomoto (a kind of a popular song), Shinnai (mostly small love songs), Kouta (Short songs), Haut (Very short songs) and Nagauta (Long songs). Their share in the music world in present Japan also declined nearly to perishment. All these songs need the shamisen as an accompanying instrument like that of the guitar in western popular songs. Most of these Japanese popular songs produced an atmosphere, called "iki" in Japanese, which is now an almost dead word. There are also similarly perished phrases. Such as "Sing a love song with "otsu" tone from the throat. "Otsu" means a fine, tender and with a rather high pitch tone. There is another more high pitch tone of "Kou". Both "Kou" and "Otsu" actually mean a kind of tone in the traditional Japanese music, probably corresponding to tonicity in western music. There is also a "Niagari-Shinnai", a kind of Shinnai music with a two pitch tone higher. Most of Shinnai songs were sung with a tender expression of love. They were sung by popular singers called "Shinnai-nagashi" during the Edo period. "Nagashi" means "flow", because singers flowed into small paths in towns, singing Shinnai-songs while walking with shamisen. They completely perished in present Japan. Such "shamisen music" is a representative of song expressing the core part of the spirit of Japanese culture of "iki". The word "iki", I dare say, is rather near to the word "esprit" in French. About "Iki", there is a good monograph "Structure of Iki in the Japanese Culture", written in Japanese by Shuuzou Kuki (There is not an English translation. It is really a pity!). In this connection, the essay "In-ei Raisan (Admiration of Shadow)", written by a famous novelist Jun-ichirou Tanizaki, is also recommendable.
However, still there remains an occult flow originating from such old traditional Japanese cultures into modern Japanese popular song, or in songs for school and pre-school children. Some songs are adopted in textbooks of music in education in primary school or in town. Three of the four songs that we adopted for our present experiments are such representative ones; "Furusato (f)", "Akogareno Hawaii-kouro (a)" and "Kagewositaite (k)". "Saitarou-busi (s)" belongs to another kind of old Japanese popular song, admiring the beauty of Matsushima islands.
I am going into a more detailed description about those three songs. Among these "Furusato (f)" is the most important song. Actually I am reminded of the old scenery of the lonely small village in the mountain, where I lived for more than one year to escape from the bombing of cities by the UA bomber air force with Boeing B29, every time I sing this song since I learned at the second years of primary school at the age of seven. Many Japanese old persons may share a similar or same experience. At that time more than 70% of the Japanese population was composed of farmers. Even on the outskirts of pre-war Tokyo City, many fishes swam, fire flies flew, frogs sang and many crayfish lived in rice fields and small rivers. The people living today in Tokyo can never imagine! The present Tokyo City is full of cars with their roaring sound, blocks of concrete valleys jammed with houses and large sky scrapers. But please remember that the downtown area of this old Tokyo and almost all Japanese large cities were, during the last war, completely burned down with many sacrificed citizens in inferno caused by the US air force incendiary bombing. One hundred and fifty thousands citizens were burnt to death by the bombing of only two days, like fish in a large oven. Some died while walking with flames from their body, others drowned in the rivers to escape the heat, and still many others died from the lack of oxygen (and CO poisoning) caused by the tremendous consumption of the inferno fire. Thereafter the new post-war era began. The new education system appears on the stage, modeled after that of the U.S.A education system (6.3.3.4 system). The new education produced a Copernican change in the sense of value in the Japanese social system. According to this, almost all pre-war customs and rules became completely of no value at all. As a result, for the present old people in Japan, most of who were educated under the pre-war education system, their old Japanese sense of value and moral were completely shaken down before the newly introduced system. Even they believe deep down at the bottom of their hearts that some pre-war things were splendid and worthy to be proud of, they can not boldly say it to be so to the younger generation. Instead, as compensation, they fled into a deep sympathy to the old songs. Among them, "Furusato (f)" is a representative one. Such songs evoke a nostalgic memory of the "good and beautiful period" they spent during their childhood and youth, even though it was mixed with the miserable memories of the lost war. On the other hand, the younger generation educated under the new educational system can not imagine and share such feelings. Their sense of value is clear and positive, sharing those of the American system, even though, of course, they have individual anxieties for their own. This kind of difference lying between the old and the adult in the present Japan may produce the significant difference in feeling for acceptance of "Furusato" in the present study.
Referring to "Kagewositaite (k)", it is actually a pre-war song (1930), made by a famous composer named Masao Koga (1904-1978). As could be judged from the chronology of his career, his creative climax as a composer falls between 1930-1950, crossing the critical year of 1945, when World War II ended. His music is called "Koga-busi (Koga tone)), or Koga-melody, and is very familiar to most Japanese people throughout the present and past. I dare say that the back bone of his music originated in the old pre-war music spirit, which therefore, is loved by almost all generation in Japan.
On the other hand, "Akogareno Hawaii-kouro (a)" was produced in 1948 by a female composer Miyuki Ishimoto, with a full brilliant and transparent democratic atmosphere over Japan, reflecting the bright American civilization and culture. This " stretching" song is inhaled, word by word, into the blue sky of the atmosphere at that time. This social atmosphere is a kind of miracle because there were unbelievably a tremendous amount of miserable social problems. At the time soon after the defeat of the war, several millions people rushed back to the narrow maternal land from abroad, China, Manchu, Philippines, Indonesia, South-east Asia, with nothing in hand. Therefore, they had no choice except to live in small barrack houses covered by a wooden roof with two small rooms (about 10 m2 and 7.5 m2). A standard family at that time was composed of husband and wife with two to four children. There was a lack of food too, on the merge of starvation. It was truly said that more than thirty million people would die from hunger. This danger was thwarted by the relief of food founded by Lala, with the kind help of the US GHQ, after the strong wooing by Emperor Hiroshito to General MacArthur. Yet Japanese people still could not eat rice, bread, wheat, meat, eggs and good fish. In stead, they ate pumpkin, potato, sweet potato, its stalk, bran and kaoliang (Chinese corn). During that miserable period, the present old persons desperately raised their children, and I am a child of that time. It was really a miserable time. And those songs at that time surely evoked and inspired them to live, making their heart bright, filled with golden and transparent hopes. "Akogareno Hawaii-kouro" is one of them. Such songs which the old persons listened to in their mid of youth strongly shake their heart, accompanied by their deep emotional memories.
The second explanation for the different effects of music between the old and the adult, shown in the present study, could of course be explained through the view that old persons have a tendency to like more the songs which they heard during their youth time and were deeply embedded in their memories (Gibbons, 1982), as Okumura and her colleagues already pointed out in their paper.
According to Okumura et al. (2005), the old recalled pleasant feelings more than the adult when they listened to most music. Likewise, the old marked high scores compared to the adult for the emotion questionnaires with an endurance of satisfactory and pleasant sensation, with the conclusion that the music used for their experiments was familiar and tender to the old. On the other hand, most of the adults replied by saying that there were no special feelings felt through those songs. Considering these facts, Okumura et al. concluded that the test music could not evoke special and deep emotional feelings in the adult subjects.
This conclusion matched the proposition offered by Gibbons (1988) that people are inclined to like songs which they had heard in their youth. Also it is worthwhile to note that "Kagewositaite (k)" caused sad feelings in some old subjects. Probably this is due to their lost love in their youth, or sad separation from a secret lover, memories of who were only privately held deep in their bosom. These kinds of private sad and tender feelings can never be shared by the present adult and young persons. At that time when the old were young, it is quite natural that a marriage was arranged through the control of her or his parents, not by the bride or groom themselves, named "Omiai" marriage. In this custom of marriage, a young lady is married with a totally unfamiliar man irrespective of her hope or taste to this man of "to be" husband. Many women married, without saying any word to a privately secret lover held in her deep bosom. This forms the great generation gap observed in the present Japan.
Conclusion
Different emotional effects were produced between the old and the adult, after listening to four songs used in our experiments; "Furusato (f)", "Akogareno Hawaii-kouro (a)", "Saitarou-busi (t)" and "Kagewositaite (k)". I proposed that the difference could be explained by the generation gap lying between the old and the adult in the present Japan. This generation gap in Japan, I dare say, is exceptionally large compared to other countries, particularly to those of Europe and America. Accordingly, it is never overlooked in the music therapy in Japan. Likewise, this kind of generation gap in culture may be, more or less, observed in most colonized countries in Asia and Africa, nowadays so called as developing countries. Therefore, we should perform our music therapy hereon, taking this supposition seriously into consideration.
References
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Appendix
Hereafter, the initial parts of songs used in our experiment will be demonstrated with some consideration. However, "Furusato (f)" is very important, so that its entire form is illustrated. For "Furusato (f)", some explanations are already described in the text.
