Research in Music Series: A Talk by Junko Oba
Thursday, April 16, 2026 @ 11:00 AM; Bromery Center Classroom 150; Free
Research in Music Series: A Talk by Junko Oba
Associate Professor of Music, Hampshire College
The Aftermath of Rajio Taisō: Radio Calisthenics, Embodied Listening, and Complex Trajectories of Decolonization in East Asia
Reflecting the society’s growing interest in public health, radio calisthenics became a popular feature of the early U.S. radio programs in the interwar years. Other countries also explored its various benefits. In the regions under Japanese colonial rule, radio calisthenics was deeply incorporated into state rituals to enforce sonic control and bodily subjugation of colonial subjects. In these regions, radio calisthenics outlived the Empire as the postcolonial regimes installed new versions of radio calisthenics with different music and exercise regimen, and continued disciplining people’s bodies with post-independence national agendas. My research examines complex colonial and postcolonial histories of radio calisthenics in the former Japanese empire, especially focusing on the lasting legacies of embodied listening and complex processes of decolonizing embodied memories of colonization.
Free and open to the public.