A Life Adrift, the memoir of balladeer-political activist Soeda
Azembo (1872-1944), chronicles his life as one of Japan's first
modern mass entertainers and imparts an understanding of how
ordinary people experienced and accommodated the tumult of life in
prewar Japan. Azembo created enka songs sung by tenant farmers in
rural hinterlands and factory hands in Tokyo and Osaka. Although
his work is still largely unknown outside Japan, his poems and
lyrics were so well known at his career's peak that a single verse
served as shorthand expressing popular attitudes about political
corruption, sex scandals, spiralling prices, war, and love of
motherland. As these categories attest, he embedded in his songs
contemporary views on class conflict, gender relations, and racial
attitudes toward international rivals. Ordinary people valued
Azembo's music because it was of them and for them. They also
appreciated it for being distinctively modern and home-grown,
qualities rare among the cultural innovations that flooded into
Japan from the mid-nineteenth century. A Life Adrift stands out as
the only memoir of its kind, one written first-hand by a leader in
the world of enka singing.
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