Marié Abe’s Resonances of Chindon-Ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on ethnomusicology. In this first book-length study on chindon-ya, Abe supplies vivid ethnographic details and nuanced analyses of the peripheral-advertising practices in contemporary Japan. Via the prism of present-day chindon-ya troupes, particularly the Osaka-based Chindon Ts?shinsha, Abe weaves Japan’s past into the present, tracing how the country’s colonial entanglement, neoliberal landscape, and evolving sociality during national crises bear witness to the resonant and resilient sound of chindon-ya. Abe builds upon extensive research and fieldwork since 2005, documenting both the traditional form of chindon-ya as well as what she calls “chindon-inspired practices” in occasions like political rallies, anti-nuclear protests, and disaster-relief initiatives in Japan. Focusing on its sonic malleability in public spaces, Abe highlights how the reverberation of chindon-ya mobilizes affective alliances among onlookers across various kinds of social difference that come within its reach. Resonances of Chindon-Ya brings its readers close to the heart of “imaginative empathy” that, as Abe demonstrates, defines chindon-ya and its cultural significance in contemporary Japan.

Chindon-ya is a form of street advertisement dating back to the 1840s that involves practitioners “going around town” in outlandish outfits with musical instruments—most characteristically the kane (metallic gong chime) on the chindon drum set—to publicize third-party business establishments. As the musicians stroll along the street, they strategically engage with their physical surroundings and the socio-political contexts that have shaped chindon-ya throughout its history. To chart the cultural fluidity of chindon-ya’s sound, Abe enlists a wide range of theoretical frameworks, grounding her analyses in both Western concepts—such as Henri Lefebvre’s notion of space production, Louis Althusser’s “interpellation,” and Stuart Hall’s “articulation”—and insights drawn from Japanese discourse. Abe makes reference to an abundance of Japanese terms to describe the sound, mobility, and sociality surrounding chindon-ya, including hibiki (resonance), kikoeru (overhearing), machimawari (going around the town), nigiyakasa (festive liveliness), and taish? (popular masses). Throughout the book, readers encounter fascinating Japanese figures—ethnographer Kon Wajir?, known for his “modernology” in the 1930s and street observation studies in the 1980s; contemporary chindon-ya practitioner Hayashi K?jir?; and locals like Abe’s own aunt, to name a few—who muse about how they navigate an increasingly urban environment through sound. Their insights, in conjunction with the Western theories referenced above, illuminate chindon-ya’s elastic yet potent emotional valence. In Abe’s study, the cultural significance of chindon-ya emerges in full view from the multiplicity of social voices and sites.

Methodologically, Abe strikes a fine balance between her own ethnographic involvement and the presence of the chindon-ya practitioners. By putting her scholarship in direct dialogue with her Japanese interlocutors, whom she considers “acoustic philosophers and street ethnographers” (3), Abe foregrounds how the musicians themselves instigate sonic spaces in order to entice their interlocutors. Because Abe decidedly refrains from participant-observation (so as to maintain the economic ecology of the troupes), her unique positionality as a troupe follower mirrors that of overhearing chindon-ya from a distance. Orienting her work to the shifting sound of chindon-ya, Abe actively pursues its source—in a similar way that, in realistic settings, unseen urban households show their faces and rush to the music emanating from a strolling chindon drum set. The soundscape portrayed in the book simulates the aural reality as constituted by the relationship between chindon-ya practitioners and their anonymous audience. This shifting of roles involving ethnomusicologist, musician, and audience helps to thematize resonances between different listening bodies, the core of chindon-ya’s sonic practice. It also helps to even out the power distribution among the social agents cast in Abe’s study.

Tightly contained within five main chapters, Resonances of Chindon-Ya unfolds thematically in loose chronological order. Chapter 1 introduces the history of chindon-ya, exploring how its present-day practitioners embody its genealogy by refining the way they walk, an art central to the particular spatiality and temporality of chindon-ya. Chapter 2 discusses social differences and temporalized displacements around chindon-ya and its ability to oscillate between the marginalized and the collectivity. Chapter 3, the ethnographically intensive portion of the book, documents the gigging practice of Chindon Ts?shinsha and how the troupe cultivates “imaginative empathy” through idiosyncratic techniques of listening, playing, and interacting with passersby. Chapter 4 shifts gears to chindon-inspired practices, outlining the aesthetic and political aspirations behind musical offshoots like Osaka-based Korean singer Cho Paggie, Okinawan folk singer Daiku Tetsuhiro, and the Tokyo-based band Cicala Mvta. Finally, Chapter 5 continues the thread of chindon-inspired practices, analyzing the politics of survival surrounding chindon-ya’s resonances as transposed against the backdrop of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters and the subsequent jishuku, an enforced period of silent mourning during nation-wide calamities. Bookended with a prologue and epilogue (as well as transcriptions of two chindon-ya tunes), Abe’s monograph moves from chindon-ya’s inception in the 1840s to a set of questions about its dwindling popularity and broader implications in the present.

A strength of Abe’s study lies in her deft handling of the ambiguities about sound that chindon-ya poses to Japan’s modernity. Abe characterizes chindon-ya through various conceptual thresholds and overlaps, while curating these contradictions into holistic co-existence via the contour of sound. At once indigenous and transnational, commercial and philanthropic, and, perhaps most intriguing of all, sound intended not for listening but to be overheard—chindon-ya challenges conventional definitions of music and what it means to live in late-capitalist, post-disaster Japan. Abe refuses to bracket modern Japanese society within large-scale alienating forces. Instead, basing her study on the premise that sound aids in the production of social space, Abe re-imagines through chindon-ya social networks that are neither overdetermined nor undermined by the inhuman face of corporate capitalism. Abe suggests that within seemingly corrosive political and economic currents resides the sound of chindon-ya, a marginal existence at once embedded in and detached from Japan’s post–industrial swirl. Through the sonic ramifications of chindon-ya in the present, Abe illustrates the interpersonal connectivity that forms robustly at the brink of listening amidst sustained episodes of economic precarity, natural disasters, and sanctioned silence. In doing so, Abe successfully shows how the resonances of chindon-ya create sociality in contemporary Japan.

Readers of Resonances of Chindon-ya will appreciate not only Abe’s thoughtful deployment of theories and methods, but also the color photographs in the book and the impeccable, user-friendly companion website. The online extension provides links to the websites of several chindon-ya practitioners featured in the book, as well as additional photographs, audio and video recordings, interactive maps of two chindon-ya routes, and the relevant field footage and notes. The multimedia content helps anchor readers in the sound and sight of chindon-ya, which at times risk abstraction and re-inscription in Abe’s diligent analyses on the page.

Resonances of Chindon-ya is of interest to those in the fields of sound studies, postcolonial criticism, affect studies, and urban history. In this book, Abe makes the concrete ephemeral and the ephemeral relevant through the locus of chindon-ya. Rooting for the transformative power of its reverberation, Abe showcases her temperament and skill for teasing out various conflicting edges and sentiments of contemporary Japan. Readers will notice that Abe leaves ample space for chindon-ya to take on multiple meanings, while never distorting its enticement at the sonic margin to fit a unitary claim about its socio-political import in urban Japan. Abe’s study is a compelling example of how scholars may apprehend other sonic entities that are as elusive or bachigai (out of place) as chindon-ya. This book elicits an appreciative understanding of the dynamics surrounding chindon-ya—of overhearing sound-in-motion—and its social, political, and cultural significance. For these reasons, Abe’s first monograph deserves a thorough read.

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[Review length: 1259 words • Review posted on April 30, 2020]