I accompanied a Hungarian orchestra to Japan in 1979 and was overwhelmed by the tremendous welcome accorded to the musicians by audiences all over the country. Concert halls were packed to capacity and while applause following each work was lukewarm, to say the least (something which initially appalled and unsettled the unsuspecting Hungarians), the last piece on the program would unleash a storm quite unprecedented in the careers of European musicians.

The reception of Occidental music brought home to me not only the tremendous prestige it was enjoying in the Land of the Rising Sun but also the plight of Japanese composers. If they succumb to Western idioms, they are bound to produce derivative pieces. If they draw their inspiration from Japanese traditions, they fall into the trap of provinciality. In combining the two, they will still be faced with the need to establish an unmistakable identity.

I believe this dilemma is apparent in Michio Mamiya’s replies, as indeed in those of Tōru Takemitsu. Mamiya deplores what he regards as a fallacy that composers must develop an individual style, drawing as he does his inspiration from folk music.

He read the text in 2009 and decided it needed no change.

I.

When I was a student in the early 1950s, the music and thinking of Bartók exerted a strong influence. I was fascinated by his choruses rooted in Hungarian folk music, his piano sonata, his second sonata for violin and piano, his third and fourth string quartets as well as his study on Hungarian peasant songs. I understood that his music was nourished by folk traditions and that recognition induced me to turn toward Japanese folk traditions myself in order to find my own compositional idiom.

This effort had the result that music gradually talked to me differently than before. I drew the conclusion that the salient characteristic of folk music was its saturation with tenderness. Interestingly enough, that realization immediately brought me closer to Western music.

In Bartók’s compositions, just as in the folk music of many nations, I discovered the same tenderness as in Japanese folk music. In other words, Bartók’s works and his thinking influenced me indirectly.