by Micah Hendler
(Micah is one of 14 senior Yale men in the world’s oldest and best-known college a cappella group, the Whiffenpoofs)
First, a bit of background: as I myself learned on this tour, the Whiffenpoofs have been coming to Japan for a long time, and for the past thirty years, our tour has been organized by a man named Miyajima-san (Mr. Miyajima). Miyajima-san was an avid choral singer in Tokyo who ran a classical music program for Japanese network television back in the 80’s. One day, one of his colleagues gave him the 1980 Whiffenpoofs’ record, and he was shocked – he had never heard anything like it. In Japan, as he told me, choral singing was very serious and overbearing, in the German tradition. The Whiffenpoofs, by contrast, were fun! (Or at least he seemed to think so.) Miyajima-san was determined to spread the joy he had experienced upon first hearing the Whiffs to as many people in Japan as he could, so he asked the 1981 Whiffenpoofs, who were planning on coming to Japan anyway, to be on his show. Their performance was a huge success, and he invited the ‘82 Whiffs back the following year. But he was equally committed to giving the Whiffenpoofs a real immersion in Japanese culture, and so found homestays for the fourteen Whiffenpoofs. Since then, every Whiffenpoof has come to Japan and been welcomed into a Japanese family during his stay in Tokyo. Many families host multiple years in a row, so having a host mother who knows your best friend from three years ago is about one of the only elements of continuity in the Whiffenpoof experience (funny how the Tokyo host families probably have a better sense of contemporary Whiffenpoof history than any of us do.)
Over the last 30 years, hundreds of families have hosted Whiffenpoofs, but mine must have been one of the best. Masako Hida was my host mother, and she was kind, caring, funny, spoke pretty darn good English (which is not true of most of the people I met in Japan – apparently their ministry of education focuses heavily on reading, writing and grammar and very little on speaking), was a great cook, and truly welcomed me into her family. Her husband, Masayuki, meanwhile, offered me a beer immediately upon arrival at his house, so our relationship went great. Perhaps the most wonderful part of staying with my family were their three kids: Toshi (16, pretty shy, so I didn’t really get to know him), Hiro (10), and Koki (4). When I first arrived, around midnight on the 14th, Hiro jumped in the air with excitement. He was a fun-loving boy who also danced with the national ballet company! Koki, whom I met the next day, followed us on many of our adventures around the city, and was so adorable I almost died when he reached up to hold my hand as we crossed the street. As you can imagine, 14 Whiffenpoofs trying to navigate the Tokyo subway system successfully without a word of Japanese between them is a hilariously doomed venture, so without Masako’s help, I definitely wouldn’t have made it in Japan.
Anyway, so in addition to organizing an incredible cultural exchange for the Whiffenpoofs, Miyajima-san started his own Whiffenpoof-style a cappella group called Ali Baba (over 20 years ago), and we performed with them at our first concert in Tokyo. They sang traditional and popular Japanese songs, all arranged by Miyajima-san in a very Whiffenpoof style. Their performance was quite impressive and fun, and was easily comparable to any of the Whiffenpoof alumni spin-off a cappella groups that exist in the states. The video below is their performance of “Bye Bye, Sayonara,” their closing number. Miyajima-san is the one conducting on the right. Our last concert, in Kyoto, featured two groups who had also been heavily influenced by Yale singing – the Doshisha Glee Club and the Kyoto Men’s Chorus. Apparently Doshisha University was founded by a former Yale professor, so their alma mater was a Japanese version of “Bright College Years” (with slightly altered lyrics). When the Yale Glee Club visited both groups over forty years ago, they gave them several of their favorite arrangements, including the spiritual, “Ride the Chariot,” and during a Whiffenpoof visit during the 1970s, they were given the music for the Whiffenpoof Song. So they knew a lot of our songs, which was quite unexpected. To reciprocate, we learned a Japanese song, “Onna Hitori,” which we sang en masse to close the Kyoto concert (after a joint rendition of “Ride the Chariot”), but it was clear that we had influenced their musical trajectory far more than they had ours, at this point in our respective musical histories.
From asking many different people I met, I think rootedness of the desire to imitate American styles in Japan comes from the occupation and reconstruction of Japan by the United States after World War II. A man I met after one of our concerts told me that, growing up in post-war Tokyo, he listened to the American officers’ radio station – so his favorite artists growing up were Johnny Cash and Bing Crosby, and in college, he played in a bluegrass band! Jody, one of the Japanese women our age who took us around, (and tried, often in vain, to save us from our own stupidity in the bowels of the Tokyo subway system), explained that the Japanese had developed a good balance between incorporating American culture yet also retaining their own traditions. I definitely saw that as well – we visited many beautiful temples, shrines, and Japanese gardens during our visit (even in cosmopolitan Tokyo), and Nathan Calixto’s host grandmother gave us both a lesson on the koto and shamisen, traditional Japanese court instruments, during our first afternoon in Tokyo! We learned how to play “Sakura,” meaning “cherry blossom,” a very popular Japanese folk song that Nathan knew from when he had visited Japan with the San Francisco Boys’ Chorus back in high school, and I had actually learned in first grade music class! She was very impressed, and it definitely helped us learn the instrumental technique better. But while songs like “Sakura” are still widely known in Japan, the audience for traditional Japanese music is disappearing. Such music was incubated by the court tradition, and was never “popular” music in our conception. Now that there are no more courts, such music is devoid of its traditional function, and now falls more into the category of “cultural heritage.” But it was very beautiful, and the opportunity to take a lesson was pretty cool.
Japan was probably one of the parts of our tour that will be most intentfully about cultural exchange. Many of the concerts the Whiffs did in Japan were benefits to raise money for the earthquake and tsunami victims, and Miyajima-san made sure that we were truly immersed in the culture of his country. However, his desire to have as many people hear the Whiffenpoofs as possible meant that we sang 7 concerts in 6 days, and many of them had multiple sets. We left Japan completely exhausted, and immediately proceeded to a 24-hour blitz in Beijing with Dionysios Bouzos, patron saint of the Whiffenpoofs, and now we’re off to Hong Kong. But I will always remember how special it is that the Whiffenpoofs truly have a family in Japan.