Ikuma Dan’s uncle on his mother’s side was Kentarō Kaneko who had studied law, visited the United States of America in the early years of the Meiji era, and who was one of the persons who drafted the first Japanese constitution. Ikuma’s grandfather on his father’s side was Takuma Dan, who went to the United States of America with Tomomi Iwakura and laid the foundation for the Japanese coal mining industry and the Mitsui combine, but eventually was killed in the so-called ‘Ketsumei-dan’ affair. His father, Inō Dan, was an art historian and a member of the House of the Councilors.
Ikuma Dan was born in Tokyo on April 7 in 1924 and spent his early days in Harajuku. He was determined to become a composer when he read the book, ‘Seiyō Ongaku-shi (History of Western Music)’, written by Motoo Ōtaguro. Dan began to learn the piano at the age of 7 and he composed some piano works and songs during his time as a second-year student in the middle class at Aoyama Gakuin. From 1942, Dan studied composition with Kanichi Shimofusa, Kunihiko Hashimoto, and Midori Hosokawa at Tokyo Ongaku Gakkō (Tokyo Academy of Music, now the Faculty of Music of Tokyo University of the Arts), but he was also trained by Kōsaku Yamada outside the academy. Dan joined a military band at Toyama School in 1944, at the time when the Pacific War had intensified, and he played the snare drum as well as made arrangements for brass band there.
He was readmitted to the Tokyo Ongaku Gakkō in 1945 and graduated the same year. In order to fill what Dan felt as a lack of acquired compositional techniques, Dan began to study counterpoint and music analysis under Saburō Moroi. After 1946, Dan won many prizes and with the pieces “Hana no Machi (Town of the Flowers)”, composed in 1947, and “Yūzurū (Evening Crane)”, which was premiered in 1952, he established his foundation as a composer.
Dan’s first film music was completed in 1952, and he subsequently wrote more than 120 scores for films. In the year of 1953, Dan organized ‘San-nin no kai (Group of the Three)’ with Yasushi Akutagawa and Toshirō Mayuzumi, and he presented his orchestra works with great enthusiasm. Dan composed “Shukuten Kōshin-kyoku (March for Celebration)” in 1959 when the Emperor of Japan (the Crown Prince at the time), Akihito, got married with his future empress, Michiko, and he composed “Shin Shukuten Kōshin-kyoku (New March for Celebration)” when the current Crown Prince, Naruhito, married Crown Princess Masako in 1993.
Dan moreover contributed to the cultural exchange between China and Japan through his work as the chairman of a Japan-China cultural exchange association. He has also been awarded the ‘Best Dressed Award’ among composers. Dan, who lived a many-sided life, passed away in China on May 17, 2001.
The works composed by Dan include “Symphony” (from the first to the sixth), “Futatsu no Jojishi (2 Epics)”, “Itsutsu no Danshō (5 Fragments)”, “Muttsu no Kodomo no Uta (6 Children’s Songs)”, “Novelette”, “Zō-san (Mrs. Elephant)”, “Yagi-san Yūbin (Mr. Goat, Mail)” and more. He composed vocal music, paying particular attention to the treatment of the Japanese language and with Kōsaku Yamada’s way of composition in mind. One of the special features of Dan was also his activity as an opera composer. “Yūzuru”, based on a libretto written by Junji Kinoshita, influenced the Japanese opera history greatly. In addition to this, “Takeru” was put on the stage for the opening of the New National Theater. Dan moreover undertook the work of orchestrating “Kōhi”, an incomplete opera composed by Kōsaku Yamada.
Dan was also active as a writer of essays on music. In particular, “Paipu no Kemuri (Pipe Smoke)” is popular which has been published serially in “Asahi Graph” for more than 36 years. Writing for Dan was, in his own words, a work which “carved time” and “a practice which gives birth to the negative shadows of tones”.
