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Japan

The earliest group of electronic musical instruments in Japan, Yamaha Magna Organ was built in 1935. however, after World War II, Japanese composers such as Minao Shibata knew of the development of electronic musical instruments. By the late 1940s, Japanese composers began experimenting with electronic music and institutional sponsorship enabled them to experiment with advanced equipment. Their infusion of Asian music into the emerging genre would eventually support Japan's popularity in the development of music technology several decades later.

Following the foundation of electronics company Sony in 1946, composers Toru Takemitsu and Minao Shibata independently explored possible uses for electronic technology to produce music. Takemitsu had ideas similar to musique concrète, which he was unaware of, while Shibata foresaw the development of synthesizers and predicted a drastic change in music. Sony began producing popular magnetic tape recorders for government and public use.

The avant-garde collective Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop), founded in 1950, was offered access to emerging audio technology by Sony. The company hired Toru Takemitsu to demonstrate their tape recorders with compositions and performances of electronic tape music. The first electronic tape pieces by the group were "Toraware no Onna" ("Imprisoned Woman") and "Piece B", composed in 1951 by Kuniharu Akiyama. Many of the electroacoustic tape pieces they produced were used as incidental music for radio, film, and theatre. They also held concerts employing a slide show synchronized with a recorded soundtrack. Composers outside of the Jikken Kōbō, such as Yasushi Akutagawa, Saburo Tominaga, and Shirō Fukai, were also experimenting with radiophonic tape music between 1952 and 1953.

Musique concrète was introduced to Japan by Toshiro Mayuzumi, who was influenced by a Pierre Schaeffer concert. From 1952, he composed tape music pieces for a comedy film, a radio broadcast, and a radio drama. However, Schaeffer's concept of sound object was not influential among Japanese composers, who were mainly interested in overcoming the restrictions of human performance. This led to several Japanese electroacoustic musicians making use of serialism and twelve-tone techniques, evident in Yoshirō Irino 's 1951 dodecaphonic piece "Concerto daCamera", in the organization of electronic sounds in Mayuzumi's "X, Y, Z for Musique Concrète", and later in Shibata's electronic music by 1956.

Modelling the NWDR studio in Cologne, established an NHK electronic music studio in Tokyo in 1954, which became one of the world's leading electronic music facilities.The NHK electronic music studio was equipped with technologies such as tone-generating and audio processing equipment, recording and radiophonic equipment, ondes Martenot, Monochord and Melochord, sine-wave oscillators, tape recorders, ring modulators, band-pass filters, and four- and eight-channel mixers. Musicians associated with the studio included Toshiro Mayuzumi, Minao Shibata, Joji Yuasa, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and Toru Takemitsu. The studio's first electronic compositions were completed in 1955, including Mayuzumi's five-minute pieces "Studie I: Music for Sine Wave by Proportion of Prime Number", "Music for Modulated Wave by Proportion of Prime Number" and "Invention for Square Wave and Sawtooth Wave" produced using the studio's various tone-generating capabilities, and Shibata's 20-minute stereo piece "Musique Concrète for Stereophonic Broadcast".