In some other thread, I wrote about German prisoners of war bringing Beethoven to Japan. It actually came in 2 phases. The first performance was on June 1st 1918 in the Bando POW camp in Shikoku where they performed for the camp staff and town folk in a gesture of friendship. From these roots came the Japanese tradition of performing Odes of Joy at the end of the year, which is as standard as Silent Night is to Christmas.
Then I had the luck of personally coming into touch with the second “ first for Japan” performance of Symphony Number 9. Back in 1918, actually, they had not played the whole thing through. So the first ever performance of the second and third movements only came the year after, on December 3, 1919 performed by German POWs of the Kurume Camp in Kyushu, upon invitation from a girl’s school in Kurume. I happened to stumble across a printed program for this day here in Germany and learned from the seller that his wife’s Opa was a Gefreiter in the 1. Komp. III Seebattalion, who was captured by the Japanese in November 1914 and interned in the Kurume camp until December 1919. He came back with tons of photos and when I asked whether he could see any concert photos, out came photos of the historical moment of December 3, 1919!
The player of the first Violin, Ernst Kluge left a very detailed description of this event in his diary, which was donated recently to the City of Kurume by the son. I was astonished by the sharpness of the photos and how the scene was exactly as had been described in the diary. That morning, 45 prisoners from the camp were escorted by a Japanese Army officer to the school, where the Principle heartily thanked them for coming. He explained that though the school could not afford to pay for the performance, they wished to reciprocate by entertaining the German guests in kind with a martial arts performance by the girls wielding Naginata. After which they were served coffee and cake.
The concert was quite long but Kluge explains how the girls sat there so politely, hands on their laps waiting in anticipation, and at the end of every score they were given a loud applause. The Germans could not tell, however, whether they were merely being polite or were truly enthusiastic. At the end of the performance, a little girl came up shyly to the German musicians with sheet music and asked whether the orchestra could play Schubert’s Serenade. When the title was written in Japanese on the blackboard by the interpreter for the audience , murmurs of recognition could be heard throughout the hall, and the applause at the end was also correspondingly loudest attesting to the fact that it was a score familiar to the girls. The German recalls this as one of the most pleasant things that came at the very end of their captivity.
Anyway, the Germans had developed such a bond with the Japanese that a surprising number stayed in Japan until their deaths and two of them were instrumental in showing the Japanese at Asahi Tabi (those tabi shoes that they also wore in WW2) how to blend rubber and to help establish Bridgestone Tires that branched out from Asahi Tabi.
Here the program for the December 3 Concert printed on rice paper, and another one at the camp two days later.
Then I had the luck of personally coming into touch with the second “ first for Japan” performance of Symphony Number 9. Back in 1918, actually, they had not played the whole thing through. So the first ever performance of the second and third movements only came the year after, on December 3, 1919 performed by German POWs of the Kurume Camp in Kyushu, upon invitation from a girl’s school in Kurume. I happened to stumble across a printed program for this day here in Germany and learned from the seller that his wife’s Opa was a Gefreiter in the 1. Komp. III Seebattalion, who was captured by the Japanese in November 1914 and interned in the Kurume camp until December 1919. He came back with tons of photos and when I asked whether he could see any concert photos, out came photos of the historical moment of December 3, 1919!
The player of the first Violin, Ernst Kluge left a very detailed description of this event in his diary, which was donated recently to the City of Kurume by the son. I was astonished by the sharpness of the photos and how the scene was exactly as had been described in the diary. That morning, 45 prisoners from the camp were escorted by a Japanese Army officer to the school, where the Principle heartily thanked them for coming. He explained that though the school could not afford to pay for the performance, they wished to reciprocate by entertaining the German guests in kind with a martial arts performance by the girls wielding Naginata. After which they were served coffee and cake.
The concert was quite long but Kluge explains how the girls sat there so politely, hands on their laps waiting in anticipation, and at the end of every score they were given a loud applause. The Germans could not tell, however, whether they were merely being polite or were truly enthusiastic. At the end of the performance, a little girl came up shyly to the German musicians with sheet music and asked whether the orchestra could play Schubert’s Serenade. When the title was written in Japanese on the blackboard by the interpreter for the audience , murmurs of recognition could be heard throughout the hall, and the applause at the end was also correspondingly loudest attesting to the fact that it was a score familiar to the girls. The German recalls this as one of the most pleasant things that came at the very end of their captivity.
Anyway, the Germans had developed such a bond with the Japanese that a surprising number stayed in Japan until their deaths and two of them were instrumental in showing the Japanese at Asahi Tabi (those tabi shoes that they also wore in WW2) how to blend rubber and to help establish Bridgestone Tires that branched out from Asahi Tabi.
Here the program for the December 3 Concert printed on rice paper, and another one at the camp two days later.
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