Group Ongaku

Group Ongaku

Company type	Collective
Industry	Music, Sound Art
Founded	1958 in Tokyo, Japan
Founder	Takehisa Kosugi, Mieko Shiomi, Yasunao Tone, Yumiko Tanno, Mikio Tojima, Shūkō Mizuno
Defunct	1962
Headquarters	Tokyo , Japan
Products	Noise music, Sound art, Musical improvisation

Group Ongaku (グループ音楽, Gurūpu Ongaku) was a Japanese collective centered on noise music and sound art that specialized in musical improvisation. Its founding members included composers such as Takehisa Kosugi, Mieko Shiomi (also known as Chieko Shiomi), and Yasunao Tone. Originating in Tokyo in 1958, primarily among students from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, the ensemble officially adopted the name Group Ongaku in 1960 and remained active until 1962. Their artistic approach combined orchestral and traditional ethnic instruments with technology and everyday objects, integrating a variety of sonic methods. The group sought to fuse composition and performance by transitioning from mere sound production to treating actions themselves as musical expression. Beginning in 1961, members established connections with Fluxus organizer George Maciunas, with Tone, Kosugi, and Shiomi emerging as prominent contributors to the Japanese Fluxus scene, which Tone referred to as "Tokyo Fluxus."

Historic background

In 1957, Yoshirō Irino, a trailblazer of dodecaphonic music in Japan, created the Nijusseiki Ongaku Kenkyūjo ("20th-Century Music Study Center") together with composers Toshirō Mayuzumi, Makoto Moroi, and critic Hidekazu Yoshida. Later additions to this group included Tōru Takemitsu and Toshi Ichiyanagi. The center became a focal point for experimental composers, hosting yearly contemporary music festivals in Karuizawa between 1957 and 1962. In 1961, after studying under John Cage, Ichiyanagi introduced Cage’s indeterminate music concepts to Osaka, significantly impacting Japan’s avant-garde community and sparking what became known as the Cage/Ichiyanagi shock.

Emerging from this creative milieu in 1958 were avant-garde musicians including Takehisa Kosugi, Mieko Shiomi (Chieko Shiomi), Yasunao Tone, Yumiko Tanno, Mikio Tojima, and Shūkō Mizuno. Most were students specializing in musicology at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Their experimental projects received support from ethnomusicologist Koizumi Fumio, who granted them access to the ethnomusicology studio along with its extensive instrument collection. On May 8, 1960, these six composers officially formed Group Ongaku.

Members

• Takeshisa Kosugi
• Mieko Shiomi (Chieko Shiomi)
• Yasunao Tone
• Yumiko Tanno
• Mikio Tojima
• Shuko Mizuno

Artistic stance

Group Ongaku is acknowledged as Japan’s pioneering improvisational music and sound collective. The group sought to revive improvisation within music, which its members felt had declined since the Baroque period. They prioritized spontaneous creation during live performance, embracing chance occurrences and immediate reactions to both musical and nonmusical stimuli within their concept of "anti-music." Their work incorporated a mixture of orchestral and ethnic instruments alongside technology and commonplace objects, synthesizing various sound practices.

While initially concentrating on collective improvisation, their focus gradually shifted toward sound art based on objets and instructions, complemented by some corporeal performances. Shiomi reflected on their early enthusiasm for discovering new sound materials and redefining the boundaries of music: experimenting with piano parts, vocalizations, unusable wooden instrument fragments, diverse bowing and pizzicato methods, as well as everyday items such as tables, ashtrays, and keys.

Name

The designation Group Ongaku was introduced by Yasunao Tone, who shifted his focus from literature to music, driven by a profound fascination with Surrealism and its concept of automatism. Drawing inspiration from the 1919 periodical Littérature, established by Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, and André Breton, the name fused antiphrasis with ideas of replacement, abasement, and emancipation. For Tone, the group aimed to liberate sounds and objects rather than language itself.

Subsequently, Tone distanced himself from the untranslated term "Group Ongaku," arguing that it masked the ensemble’s essential musical affiliation while endorsing a neonativist linguistic identity.

Activities

Educated as musicologists at Tokyo National University of Fine Art and Music, the members commenced improvisational music sessions together in 1958 across diverse venues such as lumberyards and construction sites.

Recordings (1960)

On May 8, 1960, they captured two improvisational performances titled Automatism and Objet at Mizuno’s residence. Employing instruments like piano, pedal organ, cello, alto saxophone alongside unconventional objects including an electric vacuum cleaner, radio, oil drum, doll, and dishes—combined with tape speed alterations—they highlighted autonomy, materiality, and spatial acoustics. These recordings represent a significant landmark in the evolution of experimental music.

Concert of Improvisational Music and Acoustic Objet (1961)

Their inaugural public concert occurred on September 15, 1961 at Tokyo’s Sōgetsu Art Center, a prominent venue for avant-garde music and performance art during the 1960s. The group incorporated everyday items (vacuum cleaner, dishes, washboard) within an improvisational framework aligned with automatism. Drawing an audience of 400 attendees, the event garnered attention from leading newspapers such as Mainichi and Asahi. This performance predates John Cage’s 1962 visit to Japan and is acknowledged as an early influence on experimental music that shaped later Fluxus endeavors. The so-called "Cage shock" is generally viewed as more of a media construct than an actual historical incident.

Collaboration with Toshi Ichiyanagi (1962)

Soon after their debut at Sōgetsu, Group Ongaku members were invited by composer Toshi Ichiyanagi—recently returned from New York—to participate in the Sōgetsu Contemporary Series. This concert showcased Japan’s first live electronic music presentation, featuring Ichiyanagi’s compositions Kaiki for Koto for John Cage (1960) and IBM:Happening and Music Concrete (1960), where performers freely interpreted IBM punch cards.

Both Ichiyanagi and Group Ongaku shared an interest in exploring music’s social and spatial aspects. While Group Ongaku employed spatial separation to coordinate simultaneous sound production and temporal performance, Ichiyanagi investigated distinctions between sound source location and listener perception (for instance, in Distance, 1962).

Dinner Commemorating Our Defeat in the War (August 15, 1962)

On August 15, marking the seventeenth anniversary of Japan’s World War II surrender, members of Neo Dada reunited with Group Ongaku and Tatsumi Hijikata for a joint event entitled Dinner Commemorating Our Defeat in the War (敗戦記念晩餐会), held in a Tokyo suburb under the organization of art critic Yoshida Yoshie. This performance involved participants dining before an audience who purchased tickets priced at 200 yen. Labeled "Art minus Art" (Geijutsu mainasu geijutsu), the event featured Masunobu Yoshimura brushing his teeth for half an hour, Shō Kazakura conducting a ritual pressing a heated iron to his chest, experimental sound works by Yasunao Tone and Group Ongaku, alongside Tatsumi Hijikata’s Butoh dance.

Recording

Group Ongaku. Music by Group Ongaku. Osaka: HEAR Sound Art Library, 1996, compact disc.

1		Automatism Performers – Chieko Shiomi*, Mikio Tojima, Shukou Mizuno, Takehisa Kosugi, Yasunao Tone, Yumiko Tanno	26:20
2		Object Performers – Chieko Shiomi*, Mikio Tojima, Shukou Mizuno, Takehisa Kosugi, Yasunao Tone, Yumiko Tanno	7:34
		Metaplasm 9-15	25:49
3a		Part 1 Cello – Mikio Tojima Cello, Drums, Tape – Shukou Mizuno Guitar – Genichi Tsuge Piano – Chieko Shiomi* Saxophone, Tape – Yasunao Tone Violin, Saxophone, Tape – Takehisa Kosugi	14:16
3b		Part 2 Cello – Mikio Tojima Cello, Drums, Tape – Shukou Mizuno Guitar – Genichi Tsuge Piano – Chieko Shiomi* Saxophone, Tape – Yasunao Tone Violin, Saxophone, Tape – Takehisa Kosugi	11:26

Tracks 1 and 2 were captured on May 8, 1960, at the residence of Mizuno; Track 3 was recorded on September 15, 1961, at Sogetsu Kaikan Hall, Tokyo.