Soundscapes of Japan: touring a country's audible treasures

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This was published 5 years ago

Soundscapes of Japan: touring a country's audible treasures

By Nina Karnikowski
Updated
In lush Kamikochi National Park the soundscape includes the rustle of  birch trees and the song of the Japanese nightingale.

In lush Kamikochi National Park the soundscape includes the rustle of birch trees and the song of the Japanese nightingale. Credit: Alamy

If there's a sound that typifies summer in Japan, it's this: the min-min-min of cicadas riding the humid breeze as they search for mates. This sound washes over me as I stand on the edge of a thickly forested valley in Ainokura, a World Heritage-listed village deep in the mountains of Toyama Prefecture, feeling like I'm in a scene from a Hiroshige painting.

As my guide Ike Sakurai and I watch the purple wildflowers that cover the mountainside bend in the breeze, he tells me that for the Japanese, summer hasn't officially started until this cicada song is heard.

People travel from all over the country specifically to this region, specifically in summer, specifically to hear this sound. Today, being the third day of autumn in Japan, we're lucky to be hearing it at all, he says.

The sound of ice floes rubbing together in Hokkaido's Sea of Okhotsk is one of 100 official Soundscapes of Japan.

The sound of ice floes rubbing together in Hokkaido's Sea of Okhotsk is one of 100 official Soundscapes of Japan.Credit: David Tipling Photo Library/Alamy

The cicada song is just one of 100 official Soundscapes of Japan, Ike tells me as we walk through the village smattered with ancient thatched roof houses, known as gassho-style dwellings, that the Japanese travel around their country to hear.

The audible treasures were designated by Japan's Ministry of the Environment back in 1996, to combat noise pollution, protect the environment and prompt locals to rediscover the natural sounds around them. The concept seems a little odd, until you stop to think about how rare – in a world overwhelmed by beeping phones, computers, screens and car horns – moments free from synthetic noise are.

Later, over lunch at a vegetarian restaurant in the mountains, I Google Japan's other official soundscapes. There's the sound of the ice floes in Hokkaido's Sea of Okhotsk rubbing together, when they come down to Japan from Siberia each winter. The "singing" sand of Kotobikihama Beach in Kyoto is another, since it's one of the few places in Japan where the sand squeaks when you walk on it.

The Japanese say that summer hasn't officially started until cicada song is heard.

The Japanese say that summer hasn't officially started until cicada song is heard.Credit: Alamy

Natural sounds – frogs, streams and dolphins – are predominant but as well there are important Japanese cultural artefacts, practices and trades such as paper-making, traditional singing and wood carving. The Hiroshima Peace Bell, the crane sanctuary in Hokkaido and the click-clack of the loom as ramie (a traditional textile) is woven in Fukushima are more of the sounds the Japanese will travel across their country to listen to at certain times of the year.

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These sorts of unique soundtracks are present in every country on Earth, of course. It's just that I had never really paid them much attention. Learning about these official Japanese soundscapes, however, shifts the usual visual focus of my journey to the audible.

Later in the day, when a typhoon hits while I'm bathing in an outdoor hot spring, instead of scurrying back inside I continue soaking. I lay back and listen to the mournful howl of the wind, and the roar of rain hitting water. Hiking in lush Kamikochi National Park at the foothills of the Japanese alps the next day, I take a moment to close my eyes as we wander through the forest and pay attention to the rustle of the birch trees, and the song of the Japanese nightingale overhead.

If travel gives us anything, I've heard it said, it's the ability to reframe our world so we can see it with fresh eyes. What this journey to Japan has helped me realise is that it can also give us new ears.

TRIP NOTES

Nina Karnikowski travelled as a guest of the Japan National Tourism Organisation.

MORE

traveller.com.au/japan

jnto.go.jp

FLY

Qantas flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Tokyo and from there, it's about a six-hour drive to Gokayama and Ainokura village. See qantas.com

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