Basic Information

Participants：Seven master’s and doctoral students in Musicology
Location：Urumqi, China
Period：November 4-13, 2015

Achievements

“The International Conference on Japan-China Comparative Study of Music” is a bilateral conference of musicology. The conference is voluntarily organized by researchers in Japan and China every other year, and it marked the 11^th anniversary in 2015. The previous conference (the 10^th conference in 2013) was held at the Faculty of Music of Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA).

The 2015 conference was hosted by Xinjiang Arts Institute in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The agendas of the conference included academic presentations on November 9 and 10 and an excursion for the following two days. The Chinese and Japanese sides made equally 23 applications for presentations, respectively. Of the 23 Japanese applications, 14 were those made by TUA participants.

The academic presentations were roughly classified into the following research areas; 1) the history of musical exchanges between Japan and China, 2) the modern history of music in Japan and China, 3) the theory and practice of music education, and 4) the research on Uyghur music

A majority of the participating students from TUA had never made presentations at an international conference. Furthermore, they were not able to practice before the departure for China because a planned rehearsal presentation was canceled due to several reasons. Despite all these hurdles, they made fine presentations in terms of both contents and processes at the conference, thereby making a good international debut.

During the excursion on November 11, the participating students listened to the traditional music played by local musicians and asked them some questions. They also visited the Bezeklik Thousand Budha Caves. All these valuable experiences allowed them to appreciate the culture and history peculiar to the region on the Silk Road.