This website is one part of a UKRI funded investigation into the history of amateur sound recording and the idea of a ‘Japanese Soundscape’.
In 1997, the Japanese Environment Agency released the CD ‘100 soundscapes of Japan’. Accompanied by a map of the archipelago with the local and regional sounds listed, the project relied on people, both amateur and professional, to record sounds they felt were symbolic of their region and wanted to preserve for the future. But, beyond the aim to preserve the sonic environment in the face of rapid change, the project also sought sounds that had ‘meaning or significance’ and, in selecting 100 sounds from the over 700 submitted, aimed to create a repository of ‘natural sounds’ that were being lost thanks to ‘modernisation and urbanisation’-sounds which became the ‘Japanese’ soundscapes of the title.
This project explores the ways in which sound becomes connected to notions of individual and communal identities.