How pop stirred controversy in Japan
(WorldNews Music)

In his introduction to Tokyo Boogie-Woogie, Hiromu Nagahara quotes from the autobiography of Kikkawa Chõkichi, who, in 1883, became one of the first Japanese to graduate from Harvard University. `We had in those days the old Japanese notion that singing was vulgar,` Chõkichi wrote, explaining why he was excused from choir practice. Nagahara also records the famed Japanese author Fukuzawa Yukichi`s reaction to westerners dancing when he arrived in San Francisco in 1860 as part of a pioneering diplomatic mission to the United States. `I found it extremely difficult to suppress my laughter at the sight of men and women jumping around the room in a strange manner,` Yukichi recalled....