Japanese Lyric Diction
2008; Routledge; Volume: 65; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2769-4046
Autores Tópico(s)Asian Culture and Media Studies
ResumoA NOTE ON THE TRANSLITERATION OF JAPANESE WORDS Although romaji, the Romanized version of the Japanese phonetic alphabet, is neither entirely accurate nor consistent in its transcription of Japanese, it is a clear and convenient means of transliterating the Japanese writing for those who are not literate in hiragana, katakana, and kanji scripts; therefore, italicized romaji will be used to denote all Japanese text in the body of this article. For consistency, Japanese proper names will be listed in accordance to the Western standard order of given name preceding family name. INTRODUCTION JAPANESE-LANGUAGE SONG, although little known in the classical voice studio, is ideal repertoire for just such an environment. There are three primary reasons to promote Japanese repertoire to the Western-trained voice student. Foremost, Japanese poetry is known for its unique aesthetic qualities, characterized by simplicity and suggestion. Poetic forms such as haiku and waka have inspired the compositions of many different genres in both Japan and the Western world. Haiku displays rich natural imagery, economical use of text, and a structure informed by short syllabic patterns; the combination of brevity, beauty, and structure make for strong song texts. Second, there is the cultural incentive to introduce new and diverse repertoire into the voice studio. Like much of the academic musical world, the vocal arts long have been dominated by Western influence, but recent interests have promoted research in diverse musical studies. Within the world of voice, the promotion of Asian song literature is exemplified by Dr. Mei Zhong's recent publication of Chinese folk songs.1 Third, and most importantly, the exploration of Japanese song is beneficial for the exposure it provides the student to the Japanese language. Spoken Japanese is an inherently lyric language, manageable to singers at various levels of technical proficiency. This article addresses the subject of Japanese lyric diction with the goal of promoting Japanese as a sung language. BACKGROUND ON THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE The defining characteristics of spoken Japanese make it an instructive and rewarding language in which to sing, especially for students at the beginning of their training. While written Japanese is indeed complex and includes two syllabic alphabets in addition to a collection of 3,000-5,000 Chinese kanji symbols, spoken Japanese is, on the other hand, simple. The two syllabic alphabets, hiragana and katakana, consist of forty-six sounds; both kana scripts were derived from simplified versions of the Chinese kanji characters. Figure 1 shows the hiragana characters with their IPA pronunciation. Although the katakana characters differ from hiragana characters in their appearance, they behave in the same manner when it comes to pronunciation. Today, katakana is used most frequently to transcribe words of foreign origin. American missionary Dr. Charles Hepburn developed an additional phonetic alphabet following Japan's opening to the West. Romaji, a Romanized version of the kana alphabet, initially was used as a pedagogic tool for illiterate, nonnatives trying to learn how to speak Japanese.2 Levels of Politeness The structure of the Japanese language is highly influenced by levels of politeness, demonstrated by the wealth of synonymous nouns, which vary in pronunciation according to social hierarchy and situation. The Japanese word for I varies, depending upon the gender and social rank of the speaker. A young boy would say Ore, while a man might say Boku. A person speaking to someone of equal rank could say Watashi; yet, the same person would say Watakushi when speaking to someone of higher rank. Particles Another structural feature of Japanese is its use of particles, short sounds that demark the syntactic functions of words and sometimes act as prepositions. For example, the particle ha [wa], marks the subject of a verb, while the particle wo [o], marks the object of a verb. …
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