Eri Hotta
Harvard University Press [240 pages]
Harvard University Press [240 pages]
For release November 15, 2022
Eri Hotta is a historian who specializes in writing about world events from a Japanese perspective, and this book about Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998) is as much a book about Suzuki’s life and work as it is about, culture, business, and education in the twentieth century.
Shinichi Suzuki’s family was part of the Samurai class, the top six percent of Japan’s population. Shinichi's father, Masakichi Suzuki, owned a violin factory in Nagoya, and Shinichi was one of thirteen children that Masakichi had with his wife, Nobu, and his mistress, a geisha named Ryo (Ryo was Shinichi’s mother).
The family was cultured and literate, and Shinichi enjoyed reading works of Tolstoy, Francis Bacon, and Benjamin Franklin, and he also enjoyed reading about Shushogi Buddhism. Shinichi helped out in his father's violin factory as a child, but didn’t fall in love with the violin until, at the age of seventeen, he heard a phonograph recording of Misha Elman. Suzuki taught himself to play by immitating Elman's playing, and then took lessons from Ko Ando, who had studied in Berlin with Joseph Joachim.
A wealthy family friend paid for Shinichi to go traveling around the world, and he ended up staying in Germany. He lived there during the best years of the Weimar Republic, and he lived well because the Yen was strong against the German Mark, and great violin playing was everywhere. Suzuki became friends with the fellow violinist and music lover, Albert Einstein, studied privately with Karl Klinger, and married a German woman named Waltraud Prange. The one available recording of Suzuki from that period shows that he was a respectable violinist. And it seems from all accounts that he was a lively and charismatic person.
Shinichi returned to Japan in 1928 and formed a string quartet with three of his brothers. It wasn’t until the 1930s that Shinichi needed to work for a living, so during the Great Depression, which started the Showa Depression in Japan, he began teaching. He started working with teenagers, and was fortunate to have the chance to get to know the twelve-year-old Nejiko Suwa, a great violinist, who was the daughter of music-loving parents who participated directly in their daughter’s study. From observing this family, he decided that parental involvement was key to musical development. This is not a new idea, but it was a new idea for Suzuki, who wanted to change the the world through music.
Eri Hotta is a historian who specializes in writing about world events from a Japanese perspective, and this book about Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998) is as much a book about Suzuki’s life and work as it is about, culture, business, and education in the twentieth century.
Shinichi Suzuki’s family was part of the Samurai class, the top six percent of Japan’s population. Shinichi's father, Masakichi Suzuki, owned a violin factory in Nagoya, and Shinichi was one of thirteen children that Masakichi had with his wife, Nobu, and his mistress, a geisha named Ryo (Ryo was Shinichi’s mother).
The family was cultured and literate, and Shinichi enjoyed reading works of Tolstoy, Francis Bacon, and Benjamin Franklin, and he also enjoyed reading about Shushogi Buddhism. Shinichi helped out in his father's violin factory as a child, but didn’t fall in love with the violin until, at the age of seventeen, he heard a phonograph recording of Misha Elman. Suzuki taught himself to play by immitating Elman's playing, and then took lessons from Ko Ando, who had studied in Berlin with Joseph Joachim.
A wealthy family friend paid for Shinichi to go traveling around the world, and he ended up staying in Germany. He lived there during the best years of the Weimar Republic, and he lived well because the Yen was strong against the German Mark, and great violin playing was everywhere. Suzuki became friends with the fellow violinist and music lover, Albert Einstein, studied privately with Karl Klinger, and married a German woman named Waltraud Prange. The one available recording of Suzuki from that period shows that he was a respectable violinist. And it seems from all accounts that he was a lively and charismatic person.
Shinichi returned to Japan in 1928 and formed a string quartet with three of his brothers. It wasn’t until the 1930s that Shinichi needed to work for a living, so during the Great Depression, which started the Showa Depression in Japan, he began teaching. He started working with teenagers, and was fortunate to have the chance to get to know the twelve-year-old Nejiko Suwa, a great violinist, who was the daughter of music-loving parents who participated directly in their daughter’s study. From observing this family, he decided that parental involvement was key to musical development. This is not a new idea, but it was a new idea for Suzuki, who wanted to change the the world through music.
As a beginning teacher he made things up as he went along. Through a mixture of will, trial and error, devotion to his mission, and personal dedication, he had success. He also had the great fortune to work with young people who loved music as much as he did, and was able to realize his vision of a applying a kinder way of teaching than the authoritarian model he would have witnesed in Germany. He also believed that playing music was something that should be experienced by everyone, not just the “gifted,” and believed that anyone could develop musically to the best of his or her ability, as long as the learning environment was filled with love. He believed that teaching with love should be used for areas outside of music too.
He started teaching violin to very young children because he could. His brother ran the family's violin factory, and was able to produce large numbers of fractional-sized violins for the smallest children. It was a beneficial situation for all involved.
Eri Hotta’s account of post World War II Japan is remarkable. I was particularly moved by her image of Shinichi Suzuki foraging in the mountains for edible plants to feed his family. After the war Waltraud Suzuki established herself as a businesswoman, and moved to Tokyo. She thought of Japan’s defeat as her liberation. For ten years Shinichi lived with his sister in Matsumoto, became very influential as a teacher, and was successful at “growing” a new generation of teachers. When Waltraud returned to Matsumoto, she established herself as the worldwide spokesperson for Shinichi’s “Talent Education Movement.” She used her substantial business skills to promote the movement, while Shinichi remained devoted to the work of the students who used his method. Deep into his old age he listened every night to tapes of the Suzuki repertoire that children sent him, and he returned the tapes with his own hand-painted and signed watercolor certificates. By the 1970s, through Waltraud’s hard work, Suzuki's name was a major “brand” in American musical education. Now it is ubiquitous.
Reading Eri Hotta’s beautifully written book about Suzuki's life in relation to twentieth-century Japan, early-twentieth-century Germany, and later twentieth-century America, is a tremendous pleasure. Hotta is a great historian, an excellent writer, and has significant personal experience with music and with the Suzuki Method. She is the perfect tour guide. I would recommend this book to every twenty-first-century musician, anyone interested in Japanese culture and history, and any teacher of any subject, in any country of the world.
It is available to pre-order from Amazon.
