CULTURE CENTERS
ON CULTURAL CENTERS
by
TAJ
Mrs. Sato is a Japanese housewife with a penchant for hobbies. She studies doll-making and needlepoint. She practices flower arrangement and the tea ceremony. She has recently given up her yoga class to make room in her schedule for aerobic dance lessons as a new way of keeping trim. And when she is not learning English conversation of French cooking, she's involved in leathercraft, cake decorating, weaving, or photography. Mrs. Sako takes all these course under one roof - that of her local cultural center.
Mrs. Sato is an exaggerated example, of course, but she illustrates a growing trend. Searching for stimulating leisure-time alternatives to television-watching, reading, and movie-going, Japanese men and women, especially middle-class housewives in their 30s and 40s, are flocking by the thousands to newly established cultural centers where they can pursue arts, crafts, and personal enrichment as never before.
Booming Business
One of the first such centers to open in Japan was the Asahi Cultural Center in Tokyo's Shinjuku district. Owned and operated by the mammoth Asahi Newspaper Group, it has offered a diverse range of classes to the public since April 1974. Today, these classes number some 1,000 in all, organized on quarterly and annual bases with terms beginning in April, July, September, October, and January. A typical class might meet once or twice a week, contain anywhere from 10 to 100 students, and cost 15,000 Yen-30,000 Yen or more for three months' tuition.
According to an Asahi spokeswoman, about 20,000 people are currently enrolled in course at the Tokyo center and another 12,000 at its Yokohama branch. Most of the students are aged over 30; approximately 80 percent are female. Painting, golf, tennis, and foreign languages (English, French, German, Latin, Spanish, Swedish, Greek, Hebrew, and nine others) top the list as the most popular subjects for study. As for the hundreds of teachers needed to conduct these classes, most are hired on a part-time basis from outside the Asahi organization, which allows the center to choose an outstanding array of professionals from every field.
In 1978, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), the national broadcasting network, followed Asahi's lead by opening its own cultural center in Tokyo's Aoyama Twin Towers Building, featuring three-month programs priced at 20,000 Yen and up. In terms of class frequency, age and sex statistics of students enrolled, and types of nonsports courses offered, NHK's center closely resembles Asahi CC. One major difference, however, is that NHK CC instructors are frequently the same ones employed in preparing NHK educational television broadcasts, so students have the added treat of being taught by "TV celebrities."
Not to be outdone, the Yomiuri Newspaper Group has also got into the cultural act, opening four centers at various Tokyo locations. Its Ogikubo CC, established in October 1981, takes up an entire floor of a large shopping complex, drawing about 5,000 students annually, 85 percent female, mainly between 30 and 35 years old. Some 220 different classes are offered here, with 15-50 members each. Altogether, the Yomiuri CC network boasts 25,000 enrollees, and the number continues to grow rapidly.
Self-Serving, Public Service
It comes as no surprise that news-oriented organizations such as Asahi, NHK, and Yomiuri have become active in dissemination of culture. Each is already involved in socio-economic-political education through the provision of news materials; it is just a short step from one information service to the other. The Asahi has been sponsoring cultural activities for more than two decades, bringing for example, the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra to Japan in 1958 and the London Symphony Orchestra in 1963. NHK has its own educational television station, Channel 3, in addition to its news and regular programming network. And the Yomiuri is a multiple-enterprise company which sponsors art exhibitions from New York and ballet performances from Russia, and maintains its own 100-piece symphony orchestra, professional baseball team, and two 18-hole golf courses.
Susumu Ejiri, author of Characteristics of the Japanese Press, says that "the purpose of these cultural activities is to enhance the prestige of the newspapers, thus helping to increase circulation and advertising revenues, though no direct, immediate results are4 expected." By creating more direct contact with readers and viewers, the ne3ws organizations are thus serving themselves as well as the public.
This same principle is also being employed by Japanese department stores. Seibu Department Store, for instance, has its own chain of art exhibition halls, a performing arts theater, and a professional baseball team. It now operates a form of cultural center, too: the Seibu Ikebukuro Community College in Tokyo. Although the courses offered for this college are not for "credit" in the strict academic sense, they serve the purpose of furthering adult education in languages, dance, painting, music, and a variety of other subjects which Japanese men and women would find difficult to study once they have left the formal system of schooling.
Similarly, Mitsukoshi Department Store has taken an aggressive approach toward cultural education, opening its Mitsukoshi Bunka Center in April 1980. Tuesday through Sunday, 10:30 AM to 8:45 PM, this seven-story building near Tokyo Station is bustling with culture enthusiasts - 8,500 in all. Like its rival centers, it draws 80 percent female participation, mainly middle-aged housewives. Most of its 300 classes are scheduled to last six months, beginning in April and October each year, with 25-60 members each meeting once a week or every other week. The center charges a 5,000 Yen general enrollment fee, valid for three years for all classes, and about 18,000-24,000Yen per course taken. According to a spokesman, the department store makes no bones about the purpose of the center: " Mitsukoshi is one of the largest stores in Japan. We see the Bunka Center as a way of strengthening our relations with our customers and increasing their numbers."
Mitsukoshi supplements its six-month courses with a variety of other special activities. One of these is a ladies' club which meets at various restaurants and reception halls around town and provides a party-like atmosphere for socializing. Within the Bunka Center building, there is a small theater, the Mitsukoshi Royal, for screening both foreign and domestic art films. Potential students are given a taste of the longer classes through special one-day introductory seminars with crowd-pleasing instructors: French cooking under the tutelage of a chef from an international hotel, pendant and brooch making taught by a master craftsman, a discussion on Japanese literature led by a famous author, and the art of illustration demonstrated by a professional designer.
Mitsukoshi's most popular programs at present are its many dance classes: aerobic, tap, disco, rhythm, social, yoga-style, and particularly jazz dancing. The last is currently number one on the center's list, and so popular, in fact, that enrollees literally have to squeeze themselves in. One participant, who joined a Mitsukoshi jazz dance class and dropped out after three lessons, recalls that "there must have been 50 people in my group - about 49 women and only one man. It was so crowded on the dance floor, I couldn't stretch my arms out without hitting someone. It's impossible to learn to dance when you are constantly apologizing for bumping into the people around you."
The Government Joins In
What Japanese news organizations and department stores are doing to promote cultural activities is one aspect of the trend toward increased cultural awareness among adults here. Another is represented through government efforts on both national and local levels. With aid from the Education Ministry and the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the number of tax-funded public cultural centers around Japan has leapt from about 230 to over 500 during the past 15 years. These centers are primarily engaged in the presentation of performing arts to local audiences, bringing an incredible mix of Japanese and foreign dramas, concerts, dances, recitals and art displays to regions which might otherwise be passed over by private promoters.
By 1979, such centers contained 586 concert halls with 610,683 seats altogether. Their total revenues in that fiscal year were 206.6 million Yen, 75 percent of which came from public subsidies. Perhaps the finest of these centers is the Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall, which NHK orchestra conductor Hiroyuki Iwaki has described as "unsurpassed" as a concert hall. Located in Tokyo's Ueno district, it was built in 1958-61 at a cost of $4.5 million and houses an auditorium seating 2,300 and a recital hall for 660. About 800,000 persons per year attend productions here, nearly 90 percent of which are classical Western music, the remainder being ballet and contemporary dance.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has set aside $100 million to build another massive performing arts complex in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Scheduled for opening in 1986, the new complex will include three theaters with capacities of 1,850, 900 and 650, to be used for opera/ballet/modern dance, modern drama, and solos/recitals/ensembles, respectively, and a concert hall seating 2,300. Also contained in the expansive structure will be rehearsal studios, meeting rooms, archives and a study center for the stage arts.
Not to be outdone, the Culture Bureau, an arm of the national government's Ministry of Education, has recently approved a proposal to build a lavish new national theater in Hatsudai, near Shinjuku, Tokyo.
What sets the government centers apart from private ones is their emphasis on cultural appreciation as opposed to participation. Government policy is support arts and crafts by supporting artists and craftspeople, providing forums and audiences for their work, rather than trying to get the public at large into the creative processes. Yet Japanese individuals are much more inclined toward active involvement than the passive variety. As Thomas R.H. Havens points out in his book, Artist and Patron in Postwar Japan, "The middle-class fascination with the arts supplied droves of students but very slender audiences during most of the postwar era -- Many families believed taking lessons helped to build selfhood and inner strength among the young, and the arts became something of a secular church for people all ages by acting as a source of value in an era of otherwise privatized goals."
That attitude continues today, as Japanese men and women seek out activities which aid them in self-improvement, character-building, and the pure enjoyment of creation. Few hope to become masters of the cultural skills they pursue. Participation alone is satisfying enough. And this is why the privately organized cultural centers are witnessing such a boom.
Personal Attention, Too
The only point the large CCs sometimes miss is the Japanese students' desire for personalized instruction. Big classes work well for the center by generating the revenues needed to employ topflight instructors and operate their costly facilities, but they lack the atmosphere conducive to intimate student-teacher relationships which so many Japanese enjoy. For this reason, private schools specializing in languages, calligraphy, the tea ceremony, flower arrangement, Japanese dance, piano, yoga, and martial arts seem unthreatened by the presence of huge cultural complexes. Some have even seized the opportunity to add a greater diversity of subjects to their own curricula, becoming, in effect, mini-cultural centers.
One of these is the Goodwill Culture Center in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. It was set up by a Japanese woman in 1979 to offer small classes in English, Japanese, and calligraphy and to hold cultural exchange parties between people of various nationalities. At present, the little center has about 100 students, 50 percent male and 50 percent female, who take lessons once or twice a week for courses lasting three months on the average. Each class has about five students, seven or eight at maximum, and the participants range in age from six to sixty.
Another is the A&A Culture Center near Tokyo's Shibuya Station. It offers courses in calligraphy, flower arranging, Japanese ink painting, Japanese, and English, and also serves as a cross-cultural meeting place where Japanese and foreigners can talk over coffee or tea for up to three hours at a stretch for just 500-1,000 Yen.
And perhaps the most ambitious and successful of the mini-centers to date are the Japan Intercultural Communications Society's two JICS Plazas, one each in Osaka and Tokyo. Rather than offer specific classes, they organize cultural events, workshops, and symposiums on such diverse themes as photography, jazz, experimental video, poetry, lithography, and clowning. These events may run anywhere from two hours to three or four days each, with 30-100 participants per session, divided evenly between male and female. As a JICS representative explains, "The purpose of the plazas is to create the space and the atmosphere where people of various nationalities, backgrounds, and interests can get together and make culture happen. Most Japanese want to be international. Here, they have the capacity to put their desire into action." JICS has been offering programs in Tokyo since August 1982 and in Osaka since April 1983, all on a nonprofit basis under sponsorship from Tesko Educational Systems. After many of the events, informal wine and cheese parties ensue, allowing participants to get to know one another better and to share cultural perspectives.
Thus, large and small, public and private, Japan's cultural centers are giving adults the opportunity to broaden their acquaintance with arts and letters, manners, crafts, life-styles and scholarly pursuits - a significant step toward better understanding among Japanese themselves and between the Japanese and other peoples of the world.
This article first appeared in Tradepia International, Autumn 1983
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