This anthology addresses the modern musical culture of interwar Osaka and its surrounding Hanshin region. It is the first to draw together research on the interwar musical culture of the Osaka region and addresses comprehensively both Western and non-Western musical practices and genres, questions the common perception of their being wholly separate domains in interwar Japan, and gives due weight to their overlap in the creation of new hybrid genres. This empirically grounded investigation explores Osaka's modern musical culture to better understand the effects of regional geography, demography, history and tradition on processes of modernization.

I: Osakan Modernity: The Context; 1: Locating the Musics of Modern Osaka; 2: Aural Osaka: Listening to the Modern City; II: Creation of a Modern Musical Culture; 3: Marketing the Performing Arts in Osaka before the Twentieth Century; 4: The Growth of Western Art Music Appreciation in Osaka during the 1920s; 5: The Piano as a Symbol of Modernity in Prewar Kansai; III: Making and Remaking Music Traditions; 6: Naniwa-bushi and Social Debate in Two Postwar Periods: The Russo-Japanese War and the First World War; 7: Tateyama Noboru: Osaka, Modernity and Bourgeois Musical Realism for the Koto; 8: Modern Forms of Biwa Music in Osaka and the Kansai Region; 9: An Alternative Gagaku Tradition: The Gary?kai and Modern Osaka; IV: Hybridity in Kansai Musical Culture; 10: Takarazuka and Japanese Modernity; 11: Sh?chiku Girls' Opera and 1920s D?tonbori Jazz; V: Osaka and Beyond: Ethnic Minorities and Metropolitan East Asia; 12: Music-Making among Koreans in Colonial-Era Osaka; 13: Music and Performing Arts of Okinawans in Interwar Osaka; 14: The Creation of Exotic Space in the Miyako-odori: 'Ry?ky?' and 'Ch?sen' 1; 15: Osaka and Shanghai: Revisiting the Reception of Western Music in Metropolitan Japan