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All That Jazz
Pomp surrounds a Japanese prize but misses the point
By PETER McKILLOP
October 29, 1999
Web posted at 3 a.m. Hong Kong time, 3 p.m. EDT
For 130 years Japan has been desperately trying to become internationally significant, including in the world of the arts. Not by producing famous names of its own, but by awarding glittering prizes to leading artists of the world. Organizers of the Premium Imperial, an annual award for artistic achievement, have ambitions for it to become the equivalent of the Nobel Prize. In order to do so, however, they have assembled a committee of Western and Japanese political and industrial fossils chaired by rent-a-royal Prince Hitachi, whose relatives invented the show 111 years ago.
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Have you ever heard of it? Of course not. By luck, or behind-the-scenes good advice, the Premium Imperial has been awarded to some significant artists--the latest round included theater and film creator Pina Bausch and Holocaust artist Anselm Kiefer. But the true inspiration this year was to award the prize for music to jazz legend Oscar Peterson.
And there lies the difference between Japan and the rest of the world. At the awards ceremony, Peterson performed a spellbinding after-dinner piano riff drifting between jazz and classical. The mostly Japanese audience listened in awe. But what was former PM Yasuhiro Nakasone doing? He sat unmoved throughout the whole evening. The hawkish powerbroker of the Liberal Democratic Party either did not like the entertainment, or had forgotten why he was there. He is one of the advisers to the Premium Imperial Committee. "I think he is stuffed," said one guest.
Nakasone's reaction (or inability to react) is symbolic of a nation that simply cannot communicate with the rest of the world. The Premium Imperial is a good try at international profile building. But in the end, it's about as familiar to Westerners as kneeling down and attempting to enjoy the Japanese tea ceremony. Nakasone in his stoic silence simply could not express his appreciation of the free-spirited music of Oscar Peterson, proving once again that Japan is of the world, but not in it.
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