The Spread and Development of Jazz in Pre-War Nagoya (3): A History of the Popularity of Dance and the Battle Over Its Regulation (7)

(Continued from last time)

Rising Expectations for the Lifting of the Dance Ban

In the summer of 1932 (Showa 7), the dance fever that began to rise again in Nagoya not only affected the tourism industry and the entertainment districts, but also ignited the hearts of those who had been unable to dance for many years, leading to the successive appearance of dance schools throughout the city. Early on, Asajiro Okazaki, a leading figure in the Nagoya entertainment world, established the Okazaki Dance Research Institute, welcomed Toshio Uchida, who had been a choreographer for the Tokyo Girls' Opera, as an instructor, and put up a sign for a social dance school [Note 1]. Around this time, the Yamato-za in Osu, managed by Okazaki, was about to be reborn as a permanent revue theater centered on the Jazz of Tokyo Dance Troupe led by Kimio Kawabe, and it is thought that the purpose was to train dancers. In addition, Hideo Kawai, who had been a choreographer for the Shochiku Music and Dance Troupe, established the Kawai Social Dance Research Institute with two exclusive dancers, and began teaching dance to 20 members of all ages and genders, including waitresses and geisha, with a monthly membership fee of five yen [Note 2].

Entering 1933 (Showa 8), it was reported in April that the Gifu Tochi Kogyo Co., Ltd. in neighboring Gifu Prefecture had applied for permission to build a dance hall [Note 3], and in July, Kyoto Prefecture, which like Osaka and Nagoya had been a place where dance was prohibited, took the step of promulgating dance control regulations, and three locations were approved: the Higashiyama Dance Hall, the Keihan Dance Hall, and the Katsura Kaikan (Katsura Dance Hall). Every time news of movements surrounding dance halls in surrounding areas was reported, the sense of expectation as to when the dance ban would be lifted in Nagoya grew even higher. On the other hand, right-wing groups jointly petitioned Aichi Prefecture not to permit dance halls while the nation was in an emergency [Note 4], and the movement of those opposed to dance also became active.

Koichiro Kunishio, the Chief of the Security Division, maintained the position that until dance hall control regulations were enacted, he would not recognize member organizations or clubs similar to dance halls in Nagoya, and ordered the closure of dance organizations whenever they came to his attention. However, he gradually began to struggle with the dance clubs that did not decrease no matter how much he cracked down on them, and he began to lean toward the idea that it might be better to enact control regulations early and permit dance halls to reduce the number of shady dance halls. In the August 17, 1933 (Showa 8) issue of "Shin Aichi," Koichiro Kunishio spoke his mind to a reporter as follows.

Everyone must have believed that the permission for dance halls was imminent. However, three weeks later, the remarks of Kunishio, who attended the National Security Division Chiefs' Conference held at the Ministry of Home Affairs from September 4 to 6, were disappointing to the dance promotion faction.

It is not known why Kunishio's state of mind changed, but there must have been unfavorable reports regarding dance halls at the Security Division Chiefs' Conference. As if to confirm this, a scandal was waiting that would pour cold water on the revival of dance halls. It was a series of incidents involving delinquent dance teachers in Tokyo.

The Problem of Delinquent Dance Teachers in Tokyo

On October 7, 1933 (Showa 8), one of the people arrested in a crackdown on delinquents by the Metropolitan Police Department was Masao Kimura (real name, Hitoshi Higashi), a dance teacher at the Ginza Dance Hall, and it was revealed that Kimura was preying on female customers who frequented the dance hall. When the Metropolitan Police Department investigated further, it became clear that Kimura's colleague, dance teacher Kazuo Tamura (commonly known as Eddie Cantor), had been indulging in all sorts of lewd behavior with numerous women, including idle madams, daughters of wealthy families, geisha, waitresses, Kiyomoto masters, wives of company executives, and wives of hospital directors. Tamura was arrested, and the promiscuity of the idle madams was exposed to the light of day.

It is known that the "wife of a certain hospital director" who appears in this article is the wife of Mokichi Saito, who is known as the director of the Aoyama Brain Hospital and also as a poet. Following Tamura, Kichikichi Kojima, a chief dance teacher at the Florida Dance Hall who prided himself on being "Japan's most handsome man," and Shukuji Sado, an exclusive photographer and assistant dance teacher at the same Florida, were arrested, and the ugly state of delinquent dance teachers was revealed one after another. Furthermore, among the idle madams summoned by the Metropolitan Police Department was the wife of Count Isamu Yoshii, a poet, and because she revealed during the investigation that gambling with mahjong and hanafuda was rampant among literary figures, the situation developed into the simultaneous arrest of 15 people in total, including the couples of Ton Satomi, Masao Kume, Mosaku Sasaki, and Keiji Nakatogawa. The full story of this so-called "Delinquent Peer Incident" is introduced in detail in the "Series: Showa Incident History" on the Bunshun Online electronic edition, so please refer to it.

Following the delinquent dance teacher problem, each dance hall began to dismiss dance teachers with bad conduct. In addition, the Japan Dance Teachers Association saw its chairman, Saburo Ueki of the Koka Dance Hall, resign, and was busy with countermeasures such as prohibiting the entry of people in student uniforms into dance halls. It seems that the background to such conduct by dance teachers was that, unlike female dancers, they did not have income such as tips, and there was a large disparity in terms of fixed income.

Shift to Dance Suppression

This incident was reported nationwide with great shock, and criticism of dance rose once again in Nagoya. The authorities also shifted toward strengthening the regulation of dance, and as mentioned previously, they moved to ban dancing by prostitutes and geisha, while also moving to eradicate dance groups and dance schools in the city. The Aichi Prefecture Security Division applied the Amusement Place Control Regulations to dance, notifying each police station to impose severe penalties on anyone holding social dances that gathered large numbers of people, regardless of the name used, and to subject the organizers to detention or fines. Until then, the most they had done was order the closure of dance halls, but this instruction meant they would now go as far as making arrests, which was equivalent to a declaration of a crackdown on dance by the police.

At the Aichi Prefectural Assembly on the 11th of the same month, when asked by a questioner whether or not to permit dance halls, Police Chief Yoshinaga replied, "Dance halls cause various problems and do not have a good reputation. We once permitted them in the prefecture, but because there were many harmful effects, we stopped, and I have no intention whatsoever of permitting them," which reportedly drew applause from the assembly [Note 5]. The Police Chief Yoshinaga and Security Division Chief Kunishio, who had shown understanding for the lifting of the dance ban when they first arrived in Nagoya, were no longer there. It can be said that the hope for lifting the dance ban in Nagoya was crushed at this moment.

The Resistance of Dance Teachers

However, even after the authorities began their crackdown on dance, the dance teachers did not flinch; rather, because they no longer expected the authorities to lift the dance ban, their underground dance activities accelerated even more than before. From this point on, a cat-and-mouse game between underground dance organizations and the authorities' crackdowns would continue endlessly. The following is a list of dance hall crackdown cases confirmed in newspapers from the end of 1933, when the authorities declared a crackdown on dance, through 1935.

・On December 6, 1933, the Nabeya Police Station arrested dance teacher Takeshi Hirota and several dancers who were running a dance research institute in Iida-cho, Higashi-ku. After Hirota's dance club, which he had been running in Chigusa-cho, Higashi-ku, was closed by the police in August of the same year, he established a dance research institute at the same location in September, charging over 30 members a monthly fee of 10 yen to dance.
・On February 23, 1934, the Shin-Sakae Police Station raided the dance research institute of Hideo Kawai (also known as Henry Kawai; believed to be the same person as the aforementioned Hideo Kawai) in Miyade-cho, Naka-ku, where over twenty men and women, including idle madams, were social dancing, and ordered them to stop. Kawai was strictly admonished never to dance again.
・On April 4, 1934, a Monzen police officer heard dance steps coming from the second floor of the home of Ichiro Shibata of the San-etsu Phonograph Company in Miwa-cho, Naka-ku, and took ten people, including idle madams, company employees, and male and female students, into custody. At that location, they had been collecting a monthly tuition fee of 4 yen from members for about two months and were dancing under the instruction of Fujio Miyatani, a former dance director at the Carlton Dance Hall in Yokohama.
・On May 29, 1934, it was discovered that Gunjiro Kato of Chigusa-cho, Higashi-ku, had set up a dance floor in his home around March of that year, hired dance teacher Fujio Miyatani and dancer Kiyoko Okamoto, and that twenty or thirty people of various professions were gathering to dance. The Shin-Sakae Police Station raided the house and made arrests. Several government officials were among the members.
・On July 31, 1934, Shin-Sakae police officers discovered people dancing at the home of Henry Kawai in Miyade-cho, Naka-ku, and took Kawai, a cafe waitress, and a self-proclaimed CK broadcasting station employee into custody. On the same day, several people were also taken into custody for dancing in Gofuku-cho, Higashi-ku.
・On September 25, 1934, Nabeya police officers discovered over a dozen men and women dancing at the home of Fujio Miyatani in Chadō-higashi-cho, Higashi-ku, and took Miyatani and 9 others into custody.
・On October 7, 1934, Shin-Sakae police officers discovered 14 men and women dancing at the home of Henry Kawai in Miyade-cho, Naka-ku, and took them into custody. At that location, a German engineer, a dancer, and employees of Nippon Sharyo had organized the Nagoya Dance Teachers' Association three days prior and were dancing after collecting membership fees of 10 yen for men and 8 yen for women.
・On October 10, 1934, a Monzen police officer discovered dance teacher Shizuo Kaneko of Mita-cho, Naka-ku, who had organized a dance study group, and over thirty men and women, including daughters of wealthy families and idle madams, dancing at his home, and took them into custody. Kaneko had a prior record of opening dance halls several times in the past and being ordered by the police to close them.
・On February 7, 1935, the Gokiso Police Station raided the site of a former public hotel in Gokiso-cho, Naka-ku, where people were dancing, and arrested 7 pairs of men and women. At that location, since November 3 of the previous year, dance teachers Tsune-yoshi Komatsu and Akira Hara had organized a dance club and were teaching dance to over 30 members of the propertied class for a monthly fee of 5 yen.
・On July 2, 1935, it was discovered that Akira Hara and his younger sister had rented a vacant house in Chokoji-cho, Higashi-ku, and were using it as a secret dance hall, and the Nabeya Police Station arrested 6 pairs of men and women. After graduating from Chukyo Commercial School, Hara had traveled around dance halls in Tokyo before returning to Nagoya. He approached a man he met at a billiard hall in Higashi-ku, asking him to gather like-minded people because he wanted to start a dance club, and was holding dances with monthly membership fees of 10 yen for first-class members and 6 yen for second-class members.
・On August 7, 1935, the Tsukiji Police Station took into custody geisha and others who were dancing at the Music and Dance Research Institute within the Minato-rakuen in Minami-ku. The members were remnants of the group arrested at the aforementioned secret club of Akira Hara.

What emerges from this is the image of dance teachers who would not give up on dancing no matter how many times they were arrested. If they only wanted to dance, they could have fled to other regions, but the fact that they remained in Nagoya can be seen as an expression of their belief that they wanted to spread dance in Nagoya at all costs. In May 1934, Shizuo Kaneko, Hideo Kawai, Fujio Miyatani, Akira Hara, and others established the "Nagoya Dance Teachers' Association" and showed signs of uniting to aim for the legalization of dance halls. Although it is completely forgotten now, there were many dance teachers in pre-war Nagoya who sought the freedom to dance and continued to fight against the authorities.

Entering 1936, with the Nagoya Pan-Pacific Peace Exposition scheduled for the following year, voices calling for the establishment of dance halls to accommodate visiting foreigners rose again, but unfortunately, this coincided with the problem of delinquent dance teachers in Tokyo (the Second Pink Incident), and the authorities' stance did not change. Thereafter, due to the worsening situation caused by the Second Sino-Japanese War, the public's view of dance halls became even more severe, and at the end of 1937, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced a policy to close dance halls nationwide, and existing dance halls began to go out of business one after another. On October 31, 1940, all dance halls in Tokyo were closed, and the halls that had remained in the Kansai region and elsewhere also disappeared by the end of that year. The fate of the dance teachers in Nagoya who had continued to resist the dance ban was thus sealed.

(This installment continues to ⑧)

[Note 1] Nagoya Shimbun, August 8, 1932
[Note 2] Nagoya Shimbun, September 13, 1932. The Kawai Social Dance Research Institute was ordered to close by the Prefectural Security Division on September 10 of the same year.
[Note 3] Nagoya Shimbun, April 15, 1933. However, no facts can be confirmed that a dance hall was opened after that.
[Note 4] Nagoya Shimbun, August 13, 1933; Shin Aichi, same date
[Note 5] Shin Aichi, December 12, 1933

<Headline Image>
Nagoya Shimbun, July 3, 1935: Women being taken into custody from a secret dance club

<References>
Yoshikazu Nagai, "Jazz and Dance in Japan," 2024, Kansai University Press
Yoshikazu Nagai, "Social Dance and the Japanese," 1991, Shobunsha
The Asahi Shimbun Company, "Tokyo Asahi Shimbun"
Shin Aichi Shimbun Company, "Shin Aichi"
Nagoya Shimbun Company, "Nagoya Shimbun"

<Web References>
Bungeishunju Ltd., "Bunshun Online, Serial: History of Showa Incidents"