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"Soundscape" may be a word that is still unfamiliar to you. "Soundscape" is a compound word made up of "sound," meaning sound, and the suffix "scape," meaning a view or scenery. It was proposed in the late 1960s by R. Murray Schafer, a Canadian contemporary music composer, music educator, and environmental thinker.

Soundscape is generally translated as "soundscape," but this concept is not as simple as just noticing soundscapes and valuing the culture of listening to them. Through this word, we can first recall the aesthetics of familiar landscapes and the rich culture of sound in our lives. Furthermore, it can also question the relationship that people in certain regions have had with their environment through the world of sound at different times, and allow us to reconsider the way in which these relationships are formed as the "culture" unique to that place.

Because we are usually "visual-dominant," we tend to be unconscious of the world of sound. In this context, the term "soundscape" heightens our auditory sensibility and thinking. In contrast to "landscape," the environment captured by soundscape does not remain in form. In other words, by "capturing something beyond form," we are also reminded of the memories and history of each place.

I am currently using this concept to participate in "new urban development" activities in real cities. Until now, urban design generally meant adding aesthetic elements to the design of the city's appearance. However, recent urban design has come to value the culture and history of the land as part of the local resources, and how the people who live there and those who visit can interact with the land. In such design activities, the concept and methods of soundscape, which targets the invisible, are very useful. It is based on the present and aims to connect the past and future while digging up the memories of the land.

The basic research method in soundscape research is "field research/fieldwork." When the subject is the history of a city, past objects often remain for posterity as part of the visible landscape, making them easy to study, whereas sounds do not leave any tangible mark. So how do we research past sounds? Soundscape research has a method called "ear witness." This is a coined word from "eyewitness," meaning "witness," and refers to literary works, diaries, poetry, and other texts that contain descriptions of sounds heard in specific places. These are used as clues to investigate the soundscapes of the past, and from there, the memories of the place can be unravelled.

Did you know that many great writers once lived in Sibuya? For example, in the Meiji era, Yosano Akiko lived on Dogenzaka with Tekkan around the time she published her collection of poems, "Maragami." In her letters from that time, there are many references to "sounds," such as picking up fallen chestnuts or hearing the sounds of people and carts going down Miyamasuzaka. Kunikida Doppo's house was located near the current NHK Broadcasting Center, and in his book "Musashino," he describes the soundscape of the woods that he heard there.

Sibuya is now a town filled with many young people, but by reading these descriptions and visiting each place, you can feel the changes from Sibuya 's past to the present through the soundscape. From there, you can also connect your thoughts to Sibuya 's future. I call this activity "Sibuya Sound Listening Walk" and incorporate it into my seminar instruction. In this way, soundscape research allows you to use sound as a window to consider the town and environment behind it, and even the people who listen to that scenery.

Taking this a step further, we are also carrying out a project in which seminar students set a specific theme of their own interest and go for a walk around Sibuya, developing their own unique "walking route." One student in the same seminar created a route around the "churches" around Sibuya Station, another around "music halls," and yet another around "hills."

Just as people hear sounds and interpret soundscapes differently even when they are in the same place, even routes to enjoy the same city of Sibuya can be very diverse depending on how each individual interprets the target area. This also allows us to understand the fun of walking with others and the importance of communication.

Sibuya is currently undergoing redevelopment around the station and the surrounding area, but we don't want to see a town similar to Shinjuku or Ikebukuro being created there. A city is attractive because it has a diverse and unique town. With this in mind, we are developing a project called <SCAPEWORKS Hyakkendana> in the area of Sibuya called "Hyakendana," which is on the right hand side after going up Dogenzaka. This project has been ongoing since 2009.

Hyakkendana was the place where Sibuya residents would go to watch movies from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was a mecca for subculture, with rows of classic music cafes and jazz cafes. The deep charm of Sibuya has accumulated in this area, and its memories remain to this day. SCAPEWORKS Sibuya is an urban development project through art that aims to connect Sibuya Sibuya unique personality and culture to future redevelopment projects by exploring the genetic makeup of the city of Shibuya and disseminating that information in Hyakkendana, the former center of urban culture in Shibuya.

Just as the word "landscape" includes the meaning of "landscaping," "soundscape" also includes the meaning and action of creating soundscapes and environmental design from the world of sound. As an example, I would like to introduce a garden created from soundscape and a related project in which I was actually involved.

The Rentaro Taki Memorial Museum in Taketa City, Oita Prefecture, is a restored and repurposed former home where Rentaro Taki spent his childhood. Nearly 30 years ago, the late architect Yasufumi Kijima, who was a professor at Kumamoto University at the time, asked us to create a garden at the former home that would "focus on the sound environment."

We started by researching the soundscape of the garden at that time. We visited the old house many times and investigated the characteristics of the house and the surrounding environment. We also spoke to people in the neighborhood and those connected to Rentaro about the sounds that used to be heard there, and looked at documents written about Rentaro's life. What we learned from these investigations is that Taketa at that time was a town rich in culture, with the mellow atmosphere of a castle town, known as Kyushu's Little Kyoto. As its name suggests, there were many bamboo trees growing there, and the mountain behind the old house was a bamboo grove, and the area was filled with the sounds of bamboo bending in the wind and leaves rustling in the wind. Small birds such as sparrows and Japanese bush warblers visited the garden, and a parent and child fox lived under the veranda. We also unearthed a story that a "bokoboko" sound, which was said to be made by a monster named "Osan," could sometimes be heard from the Mizogawa River that flowed in front of the house.

As a design approach, we planted many Moso bamboos in the garden of the memorial hall, excavated and restored the stone steps to the mountain behind the house, and recreated the sounds of the bamboo forest that Rentaro heard as a young boy. We also planted fruit-bearing trees to attract small birds to the garden, while drawing water from the Mizogawa River into the garden and creating steps in the flowing water so that the sound of flowing water could be heard from inside the house. As geta were the main footwear used at the time, we also made it possible for visitors to descend into the garden in geta so that they could relive the sound of the geta that Rentaro would have worn. We used local stones for the stepping stones and curbs, allowing visitors to actually walk along them and experience the sounds of the garden where Rentaro grew up through the feel of the stones.

A related project to the garden creation was the creation of the "Taketa Rentaro Map." This is a map that shows visitors to the museum the places Rentaro often visited as a boy, that is, the places where he formed connections with the various sounds of the town. This was newly requested by Taketa City three years ago, and a pamphlet including the map was created and is now available at the museum. This is a development method that aims to connect the Rentaro Memorial Museum to the wider town outside the museum site through the medium of "sound." In other words, the aim is not to limit the garden development of this museum to a project that only targets the closed space of the site, but to link it to the "urban development of Taketa" as a whole.

In the midst of all this, I discovered that the last place where Nakagawa Hisanari, the last lord of the Oka Domain, lived is now Hyakkendana in Sibuya. As evidence of this, when the Nakagawa Count's residence was sold to Hakone Tochi (the predecessor of a company in the Seibu group), the Inari shrine that stood on the premises is still enshrined as Nakagawa Inari at Chiyoda Inari Shrine.

Although Taketa and Sibuya are far apart, we discovered that there are unexpected connections between them. At SCAPEWORKS Hyakkendana in 2013, we invited the mayor of Taketa to introduce an event currently being held in Taketa called "Chikuraku," in which 20,000 bamboo lanterns are lined up.

Land has a variety of histories and memories. By using the concept of soundscape, we can take various approaches to such environmental and cultural resources that tend to be overlooked. I would like to convey to many people, including students, the excitement of research and other activities that are made possible by the concept of soundscape.

(Published in 2016)