Abstract

The bandoneón has been considered the “star” instrument of Argentine tango since the early twentieth century. An instrument of the concertina family, the sounds and performance mechanisms of the instrument have become central in shaping the aesthetics of tango and the iconic image of Argentina. This central instrument of tango, the bandoneón, reached China in the early twentieth century through various transoceanic routes, brought in by travelling musicians of diverse backgrounds and through importation. Performed at the modern Chinese dance halls in the first half of the 20th century, it was at these dance venues in the cosmopolitan cities of China that many Japanese musicians encountered and learnt to play the bandoneón and engaged with tango scores from Buenos Aires for the very first time. The China-Japan tango nexus, thus, brought about one of the first exposures of this instrument and tango scores in Japan at this this time, as returnee Japanese tango musicians not only brought back the instrument but became critical figures in cultivating the transpacific imagination, contributing to the Japanese fascination for the distant continent: “Latin America”. Through the lens of colonial modernity and musical exchange, this paper seeks to go beyond the sonic and visual representations of the much-debated maritime and politicalnotion of “the Continents” (tairiku) in Japan at this time, to reveal the ways in which human interactions through musical commodities became central to the Japanese migration to some of the Latin American countries.