M.Ravel and Japan #3 Jirohatchi Satsuma part 1 - M.Ravel's Japanese friend
You cannot imagine how surprised I was when I found the existence of the Japanese man, Jirohatchi Satsuma. The Japanese businessman/author was nicknamed "baron Satsuma" because of his extraordinarily rich life and spent an astronomical amount of money in Paris in the 1920s. He was not just a rich man, but also a patron of the arts. His friends include Jean Cocteau, Léonard Tsugouharu Foujita, Thomas Edward Lawrence (from Lawrence of Arabia!), and composers such as Debussy, Ravel, members of Les Apaches.
Jirohatchi Satsuma (1901-1976)
After the Russo-Japanese War, Japan had a financially difficult time and could not afford money to build a facility in a foreign country. But it was not the case for Satsuma... he contributed the total amount for building Maison du Japon in Paris to host and support students from Japan. This was greatly valued by the French government and he was awarded L'ordre national de la légion d'honneur. And hard to imagine, but he is known in Japan for having allegedly spent around 481,000,000 euros during his stay in Europe...
I hope these stories will tell you how rich he was, but more than that, how supportive of the arts he was as well. Sadly, when I searched the name Jirohatchi Satsuma in Google, no information about him in English was found. This blog contains articles that are only available in Japanese, or in the national library of Japan. Of course, this is a part of my Ravel and Japan blog series, but I also hope that it will be somewhat interesting for non-classical music lovers as well since Satsuma was such an interesting man.
The friendship of Satsuma and Ravel started at Maurice Delage's house, the only student of Ravel, on a dazzling day with fresh verdure in 1924. As Satsuma describes in his autobiography, the house of Delage at that time “had the feeling of an assembly hall of great musicians in Europe”. Satsuma also described in an interview that “At that time, the house of Delage and the house of the pianist, Gil-Marchex were the haunt." Henri-Gil-Marchex is also a key person for the relationship between Ravel and Japan, more about that in a future blog post.
Jirohatchi visited Maurice Delage’s house with his girlfriend on that day and met composers such as Ravel, Florent Schmitt, and Roland-Manuel in the house. A Japanese author Murakami revealed in his book that the girlfriend who visited Delage’s house with Satsuma, and who actually introduced him to the “great musicians”, was the wife of Gil-Marchex. Yes, this is a love triangle! Eventually, Satsuma organized a concert tour for Henri Gil-Marchex in Japan, which enlightened Japanese people about French music. Of course, a love triangle should not be praised, but the wife of Gil-Marchex had a big role in Satsuma’s friendship with the musicians at the center of French music in the 1920s and even the cultural relationship between France and Japan as well.
After a few months of meeting Ravel at Delage’s house, Ravel and Satsuma got along well. In an interview in 1973, Satsuma recalls that he was seeing Ravel all the time. According to this interview, Ravel composed a small piano piece for Satsuma, named “Foxtrot”. The interviewer asked Satsuma if he still has the sheet music, but Satsuma’s answer was “well, I had it before, I wonder where it is now. ” Of course I immediately asked a Japanese museum and the Waseda University Library, which archive some of Satsuma’s possessions, but unfortunately the library did not help me. I kind of think that if they found any new sheet music amongst his possessions it would have been big news already... but I also could not believe Satsuma did not take care of the sheet music, because if Ravel wrote something for me I would treat it as a family heirloom.
The title Foxtrot reminds us Ravel’s opera L'enfant et les sortilèges of course. The opera was composed between 1920 to 1925, however, Ravel was struggling with composing the piece and according to his London interview for the Morning Post in April 1923 he insists that he has written nothing for a year. In 1924, he finally started composing the opera again, and it is the year the friendship between Ravel and Satsuma began! There is no information on the date of composition of the small piano piece “Foxtrot” which was dedicated to Satsuma, however, this could possibly (or not) be the same piece as the Five o’clock Foxtrot from L'enfant et les sortilèges.
Speaking of Foxtrot, there are two Japanese words “Harakiri" and "Sessue Hayakawa" in the piece. Harakiri, is probably the most famous Japanese word so I omit explaining what it is, but who was Sessue Hayakawa? That will be discussed in another blog post, so please wait for it! Also, Henri-Gil Marchex, Japan and Foxtrot are also connected... more of this also later!
In the next blog, I will quote some stories of Ravel by Satsuma's Interview. Those stories are not well known in the West, because it is only published in Japanese.
The deadline for my thesis is approaching very soon, so I am excited to share with you all the other interesting results in this series in the future!
Reference:
- Murakami, K. (2009). Baron Satsuma to yobareta otoko (A man called Baron Satsuma". Tokyo: Fujiwara shoten. p.114
- Kobayashi, S. (2010). Jirohatchi Satsuma, Paris Nihon-kan koso waga inochi (transl.: Maison du Japon wast that all to me). Kyoto: Minervashobo.
- Satsuma, J. (1957). Jirohatchi Satsuma, Yomoyamabanashi (transl.: chatting about all). (M. Otaguro, Interviewer)
- Satsuma, J. (1973, October 15). Sugao no kyosyou tachi (transl.: real faces of great masters). (G. Nakagawa, Interviewer)
- Orenstein, A. (1991). Ravel Man and Musician. New York: Dover Publications.
- Nichols, R. (2013). Ravel. Yale University Press. p.251
