Tomoko Hojo. Space of Sound

Our today's conversation with Japanese sound artist and composer Tomoko Hojo, whose visit to Moscow for the presentation of her first solo project "Fall asleep" took place quite recently, we decided to devote to discussing the definition of Sound Arts in Japan, site-specificity and language in the artist's works. We also talked about her experience of the present time and sounds around her. We will pay special attention to the new album "Grass Eater Diary", a joint project of Tomoko Hojo and Rachel Kraft.

Gendai Eye: You have studied at institutions both in Japan and abroad. In your opinion, is there any significant difference between educational programs?

Tomoko Hojo: Yes, I do think so. Though it might be different condition as my department at Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA) isn’t specialized for students who create art works, but more interdisciplinary, such as compositions, recordings, arts management, performing arts and cultural studies. Compare to this, the one in London, MA Sound Arts at London College of Communication (LCC), was more focused on Sound Arts, its definition is still quite wide though. The most surprising part for me was the way of feedback to the student at LCC. Whereas there are only rough scores were given at TUA, LCC shows very detailed explanations are shown after the presentation. The score was divided into roughly seven categories like concept, theme, research, material and presentation and so on, and each section have a score. Thus, a student could easily understand the strong and weak point. I thought it is quite clear and useful.

GE: Tell me about your book on the history of sound art in Japan from the 1950s to the 1970s. How did this research work for you and has it influenced your interest in various sound art practices?

TH: It doesn’t connect directly to my creation, but I could say it is a part of my artistic activities. Regardless the output, conducting research is a crucial for my arts, and this article is also a part of it, though it is not an artwork.

I had been questioning the term of Sound Arts in Japan, more precisely what kind of artworks are regarded as Sound Arts and what is not, and it seemed like there is a huge gap between 1960s when many experimental musical practices were conducted and 00s when some of pieces started to be introduced as Sound Arts. I think working on such a question was also for contextualizing myself in the history of Sound Arts, or art history related to sounds.

GE: As part of this study, have you ever worked with archival materials? How good is the preservation of records/notes in Japan?

TH: I do often use archive materials, but its condition is very much depending on topics. Regarding the digitization of audio recordings, I felt the UK or the US is much better than Japan. Also, the copyright is quite restrictive, so personally it feels much more complicated to conduct such research in this country.

GE: Your area of interest includes female voices, how many over these decades can you meet women composers or sound artists who would not only be part of this direction, but could achieve success in it on their own? Do you have any favorites from this period?

TH: Unfortunately, no composers came up in my mind right now. I think there is a tendency or atmosphere that a composer has to write orchestra pieces when they are called “great” composers. Examples you mentioned like Mieko Shiomi, might be more for art context (though she publishes scores from the famous music publishing companies and she herself came from the western classical music world), than contemporary music. I believe (and I hope) there are some successful women composers, but I don’t know them so much as I’m not really into Japanese contemporary music scene. For me they are still very conservative.

It’s difficult to choose favorite.  The one I came up with first when I read this question was Pauline Oliveros. She is very influential and a multi-talented person, and I have been thinking to dig more into her practices.

GE: How to define sound art in cases where it has not yet been properly designed? I mean, first of all, some kind of primary experiments with Jikken Kobo or individual works of Atsuko Tanaka.

TH: That’s the point. As often been mentioned, Sound Arts has both elements, visual arts and sounds (music), its object would be easily changed depending on one’s definition. Although the term of Sound Arts itself appeared after 80s, some works prior to that period also have same characteristics as today’s Sound Arts (by the way I called such works as Proto-sound art in my thesis mentioned in the previous questions). I am not really interested in judging if this work is Sound Arts or not, because there is no common definition for it, and it would be almost impossible to make a common definition.

In Japan, Jikken Kobo or Atsuko Tanaka are mainly mentioned in the art history, not in musicology. I am often disappointed with its narrowness of the musicology. I believe writing histories of Sound Arts would be an act of re-thinking how have existing art/music history been shaped, and what has been missed from it. It would be not a single, canonic history but would be plural, alternative one.

GE: Tell me about your acquaintance with Toshi Ichiyanagi, what did it bring to your practice and how did it affect your interest in contemporary music?

TH: When I first met him at a musical seminar organized by the former Tokyo Wonder Site in 2010, I was a university student and he was a guest composer. I was surprised by that fact that he was interested in my experimental way of interpretation of his legendary piece Sapporo. Although his recent works seems to be more or less traditional type of music, he had such a wish that young composers or artists should do more experiments, and suggested me that I have to start to make something by my own, not just performing other composer’s works. I think this encouraged me to go my own way and develop it further.

GE: Speaking of female voices, how do you see yours in the present tense, among other authors in Japan?

TH: Regarding the current situation, there are many active female composers. I know some of them are making a small network to exchange ideas for improving their position and thinking some suggestions to change the current male dominant state. It might take time but it should be better than doing nothing. It has been difficult for me to commit to this kind of community-based activities as I was/am not really based in Japan. However, in these days online, remote option is also available and became easier to get access to it.

GE: At one time you started in the “Ensemble for Experimental Music and Theater”, what place does it continue to occupy in your creative practice? What has the collective achieved in 10 years of its existence?

TH: I produced lots of concerts through EEMT’s activities. It was really great to know lot of unknown pieces and premiere it in Japan. I was youngest member when it started and had a role of leading this democratic group from the middle, when Tomomi Adachi, a composer and a director of this Ensemble, left. I learned a lot from this group, advantages and disadvantages of working with other people, difficulties of running without financial supports and so on. It would be difficult to re-start it like it was before, but connections between members are still active, so hopefully one day we can reunion and have a performance together.

GE: Tell me about the features of the language in your projects. For some projects, depending on the country of location, you prepare different language versions. Does language fulfill a narrative function for you, or even a musical one?

TH: It has both functions. Sometimes I use it as a tool for storytelling, or more focus on its textual aspect. Recently I am more interested in the phonetic parts of the language instead of a way of communication, as I felt that translational process loses the original nuances and changes main component of its work. Plus, I started to feel bored to use languages for explaining the background or a concept, as many of my works are research based. So, I am trying to find new approaches towards languages and sounds.

GE: Working with the national, recording sounds in various provinces of Japan and other countries, do you manage to create your own cartography of sounds, which incorporates the peculiarities of each country and its space?

TH: I am trying to make something site-specific when I am going to a new place that has a certain context. It’s because I don’t think it makes sense to do the same as I can do a white cube space, and I would like to interact with unique environment including geographic, sociological, cultural or architectural characteristic.

GE: Why were you attracted at the time by the figure of Yoko Ono? Have you thought about other individuals with a similar fate?

TH: I was in London when I first had a project about Yoko Ono, and wanted to some projects at the end of my stay. Related to the answer above, I aimed to do something site-specific, and related to my identity as Japanese, woman, sound artists, who are interested in archival materials. Then the idea of Yoko Ono was spontaneously coming up, but I immediately denied. Then I was confused why I could deny its idea so easily; is it because she is famous, or in the pop field? A wife of John Lennon? After considering the reason why my negative response was occurred, I realised me myself had a such prejudice towards her, like lots of people have. This is the story how I started to work on her.

GE: Congratulations on the release of your new collaborative album with Rahel Kraft. Please tell me about it and the process of recording it.

TH: I and Rahel joined the art festival held in Nakanojo town, Japan, 2019. Prior to it, we stayed the former elementary school for a month and created the work. It was originally presented as an audiowalk that audience can experience it by walking a specific path with a mobile phone app designed for this walk.  As this town is not easily access for everybody, we wanted to deliver it to the wider audience, then re-edited as an EP.

GE: What are you working on now and what are your plans for future projects?

TH: From next week, I am going to go to Aomori for joining the residency for two months. I plan to work on the one of oldest string instruments in the world, which was created about 3000 years in that region, and create a sound installation using this instrument as a main source of inspirations.

GE: In connection with your recent trip to Moscow, I also have a question for you. I believe that since you work a lot with recording the sounds and noises around you, then you are more attentive to the sound environment. Did you manage to get a feel for the sound map of Moscow?

TH: It was quite intensive time so I couldn’t have enough time to explore throughout a city. There were some sounds I was attracted by though. One of them was a barker lady for a boat cruise. She developed her own rhythm and it sounded like chanting a spell. Sadly, I couldn’t record it but would like to listen to it again. Also, I was impressed a bell at the church. It wasn’t automatized by a machine but a real person was doing it by hands! It was quite powerful and also sounded like very complicated. I used to do it with my father when I small at my temple, but this custom has been dismissed. It’s very impressive it still exists in Moscow.

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[1] Experimental Workshop / Jikken Kobo (1951-1957) was one of the first collectives in which composers (Toru Takemitsu, Joji Yuasa, Kazuo Fukushima, Keijiro Sato, Hiroyoshi Suzuki and others) played an important role. Actually, later many Japanese composers will come out of this collective and make a significant contribution to the development of modern music, including experimental. Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005) is also related to sound; she was one of the first artists to take an interest in the properties of sound expression in her work. During her period with the Gutai group, she managed to create one of her most iconic works called “Bell” (1955), involving sound and spectator.

[2] Toshi Ichiyanagi (1933) is one of the most important and iconic Japanese composers. Ichiyanagi greatly influenced the development of experimental music in Japan, establishing many useful contacts with American composers, many of whom then came to Japan and held their concerts and master classes. It is also important to mention that he was the first spouse of Yoko Ono, this also influenced the process of their joint formation during the second half of the 1950s and early 1960s.

[3] Tokyo Arts and Space (formerly Tokyo Wonder Site) is a residence for artists interested in various fields of art in Tokyo. Founded in 2006.

[4] Album press release:

“Grass Eater Diary” is inspired by the Japanese idiom “Michikusa Wo Kuu” the origin of which is: a horse eats grass on the way to a destination and wastes its time. The grass-eater forgets about purpose, time and goals and just ambles around, observing, smelling, thinking–consciously or unconsciously. The green, juicy grass is an image for pleasure and contemplation, a state of luxury in a childhood mind.

This state is neither wanted nor needed in capitalist societies and already suppressed in childhood by negative idioms to make clear that one needs goals and time is money. In “Grass Eater Diary”, artists Tomoko Hojo + Rahel Kraft have transformed the image of the eating horse which is constantly moving or pausing at a very slow speed into a sound walk on headphones. You can experience stillness and movement at the same time to tune into your surroundings and make fresh connections.

This piece was originally made for the 2019 Nakanojo Biennnale in the Japanese town of Nakanojo, where the entire creation process took place. The piece is influenced and characterized by this environment. The sound walk begins near a foot bath and continues to a playground with benches under a green canopy, then down the stairs to a river path and a rice field with a small hut that serves only to shelter the resting people. The temporary artist studio was in one of the many primary schools that were closed due to the depopulation of this rural mountain area.

Many of the instrumental sounds come from an abandoned music room, where everything still was in place as if lessons would start the next day. Hojo and Kraft also held a workshop to record the local festival song "Tori Oi" (means keep birds away), which became one of the central motifs of the composition”.

You can find more information about the album here:

https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/grass-eater-diary-2