Research Trip
The first ten days involved library visits and some interviews with Japanese people about their preferences of songs. The rest of time we visited sites that are related to the songs we chose in one way or another. It was one of the most strenuous, yet rewarding travels I had made in my whole life. It was strenuous because we ended up changing our plan so often. We tried to visit places outside of our planned trip whenever we found out any new information regarding our project. To our surprise, there were museums of some famous composers/poets at different places of Japan, which are not widely known outside the local area. Store owners or people curious about our group - four very foreign-looking young women with a middleaged Japanese walking in remote villages attracted attention - willingly gave us information when they found out what we were up to.

Another reason for the change of our plan was World Cup Soccer held in Japan this summer. We did not realize that games schedule overlapped our stay in Japan. We often changed our trains, places to stay, dates to visit certain places and more to avoid crowds. Enormous amount of people moving from one place to another made us find hotels and train tickets difficult to obtain for five people. A positive side of the trip was that despite the rainy season, we did not have many rainy days. In fact, there was only one heavy rain that kept us from our activities.

Although the trip was very strenuous, it was at the same time very rewording. Since most of us had Japan rail passes allowing unlimited access to rail travel, the principal form of transportation, we were able to visit remote places, where old traditional Japan remains. Because most of the songs we chose were written in the pre-war period, we needed to see old Japan to understand the people and the cultural milieu of that time. While visiting small villages we learned how difficult it was to do long distance travel without spending almost an entire day, while in cities where bullet train goes through, we even checked our luggage in one city (Fukushima), visited another city (Sendai) 100 kilometers away, went back to get our luggage, back to Sendai in half an hour, then off to another city to stay. We did crazy things like this because there are not lockers big enough for large luggage available in Japan except in large cities where many foreigners visit. All of this cost us nothing extra thanks to the rail passes. The contrast between modern transportation and travel in remote areas helped us to understand even more what it was like to travel for those composers and especially poets in those days.

To save money for our expensive traveling within Japan, we stayed with host families near Tokyo, who supplied room and board at minimum cost. They also took students to a countryside summer home for loquat picking. Four women and a man accompanied us and provided some insights on the basis of their knowledge and their feelings about songs they used to sing in their youth. One of the host families also invited us to a high-school singing contest. We witnessed how lively the school songs are still sung by students.

Library research and roadside interviews did not go as smoothly as we expected, especially for students. Although the music library we visited had quite good information, getting information through our translator was not very efficient. For one, Japanese libraries are very strict about taking out books outside the library. Since this library was a very small one, reading rooms were not very large and the opening hours were not as accommodating for our needs. I feel that I was too optimistic about three of the students with language barrier doing the research through translators. We tried hiring interpreters but reading books is not something the non-Japanese students could do through them. Yet, for the one Japanese student and me, the library visit was very informative, since Japanese childrens songs are not commonly researched and published on in English.

Although the literary research was rather unsuccessful for those students with little knowledge of Japanese, it was extremely productive for me. I found many books on the poets biographies, background stories about the making of particular songs, and the social and cultural background of songs we chose.

I planned on meeting a professional singer while in Japan, but due to our time constraint, we could not meet. However, I was fortunate to meet one of the very few scholars who are interested in childrens songs. We had different perspectives in terms of our research interest, but he could give me lots of interesting ideas for my future projects. Since this is only a preliminary stage for my project, getting to know an expert in the field was a big gain for me from this trip.