About Kojo no Tsuki
In 1901, Rentaro Taki set music to a poem by Bansui Doi. Kojo no Tsuki — Moon over the Ruined Castle — brings together the moon, a castle, time that has passed, and the feelings of people living now.
Once a castle where people gathered and life flourished. Now a quiet ruin. Only the moon still lights the night sky as it always has. The contrast of past and present is the door into this work.
This music theatre work follows music, history, culture, and the feelings of the people on stage.
Rentarō Taki (Taki Rentarō)
A gifted Meiji-era composer, he was among the first in Japan to take in Western music in earnest, and left many well-known works.
His life lasted only 23 years and 10 months, yet he left a deep mark on the history of music in Japan. That path began when he entered the Tokyo Music School, the forerunner of Tokyo University of the Arts.
〈Birth, childhood, and student years〉
1879 (Meiji 12)
Born in Tokyo. As his father was transferred, he grew up in Yokohama, Toyama, Oita, and other cities.
Childhood
His elementary-school teacher taught him the organ, and his interest in music grew.
Age 15 (1894)
He passed the entrance exam for the Tokyo Music School as the youngest student, and began to study Western music in earnest.
〈The birth of his best-known works〉
Age 21 (around 1900)
He showed his gift at the piano and in composition, writing “Hana” from the suite The Four Seasons, and school songs such as Kojo no Tsuki, Hakone Hachiri, and Oshogatsu. He contributed to music education in modern Japan.
〈Study in Germany and an early death〉
Age 22 (1901)
By order of the Ministry of Education, he went to study at the Leipzig Conservatory in Germany.
Return to Japan
Soon after beginning his studies he fell ill with tuberculosis, and was forced to return home after only a few months.
1903 (Meiji 36)
While convalescing in Oita, just before his death, he wrote his last piano work, Urami (Regret), filled with despair and unfinished feeling. On 29 June that year he died, at 23 years and 10 months.
How the school song Kojo no Tsuki became a world art song
- Rentaro Taki ended a short and tragic life at only 23 years and 10 months (Meiji 12 – 29 June, Meiji 36). Almost all of his works were written when he was 21 or 22.
- In Meiji 34, at age 22, while still at the Tokyo Music School, he composed only the melody of Kojo no Tsuki as a song for middle-school students.
- Kosaku Yamada wanted to add an accompaniment to this fine melody. When he arranged it in Taisho 7, it began to be sung in Japan as an art song.
- In Taisho 10, Shigeru Yoshida, then a first secretary at the Japanese Embassy in London, gave the tenor Yoshie Fujiwara (then 23, studying in Italy) a chance to sing Kojo no Tsuki in Japanese at a party. The performance was received with great applause. From that moment, Kojo no Tsuki in Japanese spread through Europe and America as Japan’s first representative song. Taki came to be highly regarded as Japan’s Schubert, and this became the start of Fujiwara’s path as an international opera singer.
- In Taisho 15, the American record company Victor noticed Fujiwara’s popularity and signed him as its first Japanese exclusive artist. From late Taisho into early Showa, it released Kojo no Tsuki sung in Japanese on SP records, and the recording became a worldwide hit.
- In this way Fujiwara raised the Meiji school song Kojo no Tsuki into Japan’s first internationally famous art song. That encounter also made his name as a world tenor, and in June of Showa 9 it helped lay the financial foundation for the Fujiwara Opera Company. Because Taki composed Kojo no Tsuki, Fujiwara met the song, sang it, and a world tenor was born.
- This performance is given mainly by members of the Fujiwara Opera Company, founded by Yoshie Fujiwara.
Ichiro Kimura