Tatsuo Minagawa

Tatsuo Minagawa, born in Tokyo in 1927, is one of Japan's leading musicologists in the study of medieval and Renaissance music. He first trained in European history at the University of Tokyo and then completed a postgraduate course in aesthetics. His view of Western music was enriched by periods of study in New York and in Europe.

In 1955 he travelled to New York, where he worked with Sachs and Reese, and in 1958 he spent several months in Europe consulting musical sources. He returned to the Continent four years later to study musicology with Osthoff in Frankfurt and with Schrade in Basel, between 1962 and 1964. In that same year of 1958 he had begun teaching musicology at St. Paul's University in Tokyo, where he has been a professor since 1964. He also teaches regularly at the University of Tokyo and at the Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku.

His research focuses on music theory, notation, the cyclic Mass and the sixteenth-century chanson. He also directs an amateur choir specialising in choral music composed before 1600. Another of his fields is the arrival of Christian music in Japan at the end of the sixteenth century and its influence, including the clandestine music of the kakure-kirishitan, which survived centuries of persecution. He is also a performer well versed in Noh theatre.

His legacy is reflected in an extensive body of written work, including studies of the cyclic Mass, the history of notation and Western music in Japan, as well as work on the prayer chant of the hidden Christians. His labours have helped to place the history of European music within the cultural dialogue between Europe and Japan.